28 pages • 56 minutes read
Gayl JonesCorregidora
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1975A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
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BetaChapters 3-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 3 Summary
Leaving her mom’s house, Ursa has several flashbacks from her childhood. She reminisces about the way her family tried to hide a townswoman’s suicide from her, and about a childhood friend, May Alice, who talked to her about the mechanics of menstruation and sex. She recounts how despite Ursa’s forewarnings, May Alice got pregnant having sex with Harold, a classmate who previously had threatened to rape Ursa. Ursa had no contact with May Alice for most of the pregnancy but visited her in the hospital after the baby was born. May Alice appeared appreciative at first but then insulted Ursa, calling her a “baby,” which led to the downfall of their already tenuous relationship (144). Ursa can’t articulate why, but she sees a connection between May Alice and the townswoman who killed herself.
Ursa then recalls how her first foray into singing was quashed by her mother, who didn’t want Ursa singing “devil music” (146). The dispute over music is ultimately what led Ursa to leave home for the city, and for Happy’s, where she eventually met Mutt. He had come in several nights just to watch her before he invited her to drink with him. During their first conversation he asked, “you scared of me, ain’t you?” (149), and then repeated this question later on, when he was having sex with her. Shortly after they were married, he started sitting in the back row instead of the front row at her shows, so he could monitor the men in the audience. She then recounts several episodes that display Mutt’s mounting jealousy. Eventually, Mutt’s constraints on Ursa escalate to the point that he threatens to mock auction her while she’s working at Happy’s. Ursa then describes how Mutt forced himself on her in public while they were out dancing one night. It was Ursa’s subsequent refusal to dance with him that led to the night he showed up drunk at Happy’s and threw her down the stairs.
Chapter 4 Summary
The narrative moves forward by twenty years. Ursa is still working at the Spider. One night, she ends up in conversation with a drunk man, slightly older than her, who claims he is also a singer. He initially talks to her about music, but then badgers her about her “good pussy,” a subject she ignores. The conversation quickly deteriorates, and he leaves. Ursa then recounts how over the past twenty years, she has been able to keep to herself and avoid having many run-ins with people from Happy’s. She does have one exchange with Jeffey, now known as Miss Jeffrene, in which Jeffey tells Ursa that Cat was in a work-related accident and had lost all her hair. Throughout the conversation, Jeffey repeatedly makes lewd comments to Ursa. Ursa refuses to engage with Jeffey ever again after that.
Chapter 5 Summary
Jimmy, Mutt’s cousin, shows up at the Spider one night and starts drunkenly harassing Ursa. Ursa has him thrown out, but not permanently banned. He continues to come watch her but avoids making any more scenes. Ursa still thinks about Mutt and is surprised when Sal shows up at the Spider to say he came by Happy’s for the first time in years and that Ursa should expect him to show up at the Spider. Sal claims to know that Ursa never stopped loving Mutt, and Ursa says she isn’t sure how she feels anymore. Mutt shows up a week later and asks her to “come back” (183). Ursa goes back to the Drake and performs oral sex on him for the first time in their relationship. They end up in each other’s arms, telling each other they don’t want to be hurt anymore.
Chapters 3-5 Analysis
While the beginning of the book rests in the present, the second half pivots between the past and the future. Ursa’s childhood is called on to inform her current actions, and it quickly becomes clear that sexual abuse has been the norm for Ursa throughout her entire life. Even her relationship to her best friend is tainted by sexual vulgarity, as May Alice urges Ursa to compare “holes” and often grossly oversimplifies sex (137). Surrounded by classmates who sexually harass her, a friend who outwardly shames her, and relatives that constantly expound the horrors of sexual slavery, Ursa’s early ideas about sex are thoroughly negative.
Ursa’s negative impressions of sex seem to find fruition in Mutt, a man who defined their relationship by fear from the very beginning. Red flags start to wave when Mutt asks Ursa if she’s scared of him within the first few minutes of conversation. His persistence, which Ursa initially perceives as devotion, quickly becomes maniacal and abusive. Both Ursa’s relatives and Ursa have constantly been compared to objects, such as gold or coffee beans, and Mutt continues this tradition in full force. He throws Ursa downs the stairs and robs her of the ability to procreate, he threatens to sell her, and he constantly refers to her as his, all of which turn her body into something to be used, rather than something that can produce.
The story then takes us two decades into Ursa’s future, where we find that nothing has changed. Ursa is still sexualized by those around her, and she willingly returns to Mutt, who continues to see her as a path to his own pleasure and little else. The book ends ironically, with her fulfilling a family pattern, but not the happy one she had hoped for.
