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How Does Gayl Jones Use Repetition In Corregidora

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Corregidora by Gayl Jones is a novel filled with the repetitive properties found in jazz and blues music. The power of repetition is to reaffirm struggles and heartache in jazz and blues and in this novel, the repetition appears a lot through the generations. The Corregidora women firmly believe that in order to get their stories heard, they must use their power to bare children and pass down the stories through generations. These women learn that their bodies and lives are made to pass down a story of pain. The repetition of the stories isn’t the only thing these women pass down. They also pass down a lack of understanding intimacy and communication. The novel begins with the introduction of the relationship between Ursa and Mutt and how the couple got to where the story begins. Ursa’s tragic fall which takes away her ability to bare children. “...feeling as if something more than the womb had been taken out” (Jones 6). Ursa became a break in the cycle of their generational story because she can no longer make generations. …show more content…

Hearing the stories repeated from generation to generation “as if the words repeated again and again could be a substitute for memory, were somehow more than the memory” (Jones 11). The stories become more than the memory, it soon becomes ingrained into the Corregidora women. Great Gram and Gram told both Ursa and her mother how men have mistreated them and both of them fell into relationships that were harmful for them. Ursa and her mother took accountability for the negative behaviors. “I carried him to the point where he ended up hating me, Ursa. And that’s what I knew I’d keep doing. That’s what I knew I’d do with any man”(Jones 121). Due to their lack of knowledge about men and consetual relationships, both women ended up in relationships where there was violence and a lot of anger. They had the belief that they destroyed each other by attempting

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