게일 존즈의 『코레지도라』에 나타난 세대 간 외상의 전달과 치유

The Inter-generational Transmission of Trauma and Healing in Corregidora

Children with parents who lived through traumatic events like Holocaust and slavery may inherit their trauma and tend to relive their past in a present life. Those children, however, react differently to the inter-generational transmission of trauma. Rememory is to repeat parent’s trauma compulsively like acting out, while postmemory is to acknowledge their inheritance from parents but try to distance themselves from their trauma and recontexualize the inherited memory in their present life. The inter-generational transmission of trauma is noticeable in Gayl Jones’ Corregidora. As the story goes on, Ursa eventually reveals the traumatic memory of her family. Ursa’s foremothers somewhat forcefully have transmitted the abusive memory since she was just 5 years old and commanded her to bear witness to the officially erased history of slavery by bearing a daughter. Ursa was a terrified hearer of the sexual and economic abuse of Corregidora who enslaved the two grandmothers in the Brazilian plantation in the late 19th century. Ironically, Ursa has a higher opportunity to work through the inter-generational trauma when she cannot bear a witness. Unlike her mother, she refuses to act out the familial trauma by bearing witness to it through artistic expression, blues. She displaces and recontexualizes foremothers’ traumatic memories in her present condition. Ursa also tries to fill in the obsessively repeated familial narrative by bearing witness to a silent and hidden memory in the family. At the final scene which is like call and response of blues between Ursa and Mutt, Ursa with Mutt seems to work through the inter-generational trauma by making a different choice from that of Great Gram. The novel ends with still dangerous but reconciliating embrace between Ursa and Mutt. The Corregidora legacy begins to be put to rest.