imperfecto del carácter de la escritora mexicana.

Yo veo en Sor Juana uno de esos espíritus superiores,…queson incapaces de sucumbir a debilidades vulgares.2

According to her own confession, she had been, from the age of three, a most enthusiastic devotee of learning. She had devoured any and every book that came within her reach. At the age of fifteen she had already established a reputation as the most learned woman in Mexico. That she sought refuge in her books because of a broken heart is impossible. It was because of her learning that she gained a position at the viceregal court. Her books were her first love, and they were probably one of the reasons that impelled her to seek the seclusion of a cloister.

One looks in vain for a religious motive underlying this important step in her life.3 She even hesitated because she was afraid that convent life would interfere with her intellectual labors. She herself says that she did not wish any

… ocupacion obligatoria, que embaraçasse la libertad de mi estudio, ni rumor de Comunidad, que impidiesse el sossegado silencio de mis Libros. Esto me hizo vacilar algo en la determinacion, hasta que alumbrandome personas Doctas, de que era tentacion, la vencì con el favor Divino.…4

The biographer of her confessor testifies that she hesitated before taking the step.

Se sintió llamada de Dios al retiro … mas retardabale el parecerle cõdicion indispensable á las obligaciones de esse estado, aver de abandonar los libros, y estudios, en que desde sus primeros años tenia colocados todos sus caríños. Consultó su vocació, y temores con el Venerable Padre Antonio Nuñes.…Ya tenia el Padre noticia de las prendas, y dones singulares, que avia el cielo depositado en aquella niña … y … aprobò … la vocacion … animandola á sacrificar á Dios aquellas primeras flores de sus estudios, si conociesse, que le avian de ser estorvo à la perfeccion.…5

Juana knew that the religious state might interfere with her labors. In spite of this fact, however, she finally decided to become a nun. There must have been, then, another and a more powerful reason that caused her to take the veil. What was it?

Most of Juana's biographers have examined this point in her life with the eyes of the present instead of with the eyes of the past. To understand Juana's motives one must go back to the period in which she lived, and study the social conditions of her time. She lived in a most licentious age. A careful study of contemporary writers shows that moral conditions in Mexico were very bad. The presence of many races, of adventurers, of loose women and worse men brought about conditions that were possibly unequaled elsewhere in the world. How bad they were the following entry in a contemporary chronicle shows:

En 12 murió el Br. Antonio Calderón de Benavides, natural de Méjico, uno de los más singulares clérigos que ha tenido este arzobispado: sobre ser muy galán, de muy linda cara y muy rico, fué constante opinión que se conservó virgen.6

Had this not been an astonishing fact, the chronicler would not have taken the pains to record it. The male element of the population was under no restraint (even the priesthood was no exception) and roamed at will, preying on society. Not only immorality, but depravity and bestiality reigned. Things came to such a pass that the Inquisition brought the attention of the civil government to this state of affairs. In a letter written by the inquisitors in 1664 we read:

… veemos de tres ó cuatro años á esta parte en las causas que han ocurrido, principalmente de religiosos, que se halla comprehendido en este crimen mucho número de personas eclesiásticas y seculares … si á este cáncer no se pone remedio,… parece muy dificultoso que después lo pueda tenar … si el Santo Oficio no lo remedia, la justicia seglar no parece que ha de ser suficiente.7

The civil government, however, refused to interfere. The church was therefore forced to devise ways and means of combating this evil. If they could not fight it through the men, they could fight it through the women. By building convents and houses of refuge and putting women in them they hoped to improve matters somewhat, and protect women at the same time.

In all of this the attitude of the church toward women was medieval. They were looked upon as an ever present source of temptation to man. Ecclesiastics who did not wish to be tempted avoided them. The biographer of Francisco de Aguiar y Seixas, Archbishop of Mexico from 1682 to 1698, says:

… ponderaba [su Illma] quã necessario era para conservar la castidad el recato de la vista; encargaba que no se visitassen mugeres sin grave causa, y aun entonces, quando era necessaria la visita, no se les avia de mirar à la cara … le oymos decir algunas vezes, que si supiera avian entrado algunas mugeres en su casa, avia de mandar arrancar los ladrillos que ellas avian pisado.…

Y este genero de orror, y aversion a las mugeres fue cosa de toda su vida, predicando siempre contra sus visitas, y sus galas.…Tenia por beneficio grande de Dios el aver sido corto de vista.8

Juana's confessor, Antonio Núñez, was just as discreet. His biographer says that his motto was "Con las Señoras gran cautela en los ojos, no dexarme tocar, ni besar la mano, ni mirarlas al rostro, o trage, ni visitar a ninguna.…"And that he might not be tempted, he says: "Por las calles iba sipre con los ojos en el suelo, de la misma manera estaba en las visitas.…Por evitar qualquiera ocasion de que … le tocassen, ò besassen las manos … las llevaba siempre cubiertas con el manteo."9 Many similar instances could be cited.

It was in such a world that Juana grew up. On the one hand, extreme license; on the other, extreme prudery. Out of such a state of society the famous Redondillas were born. Is it not this very attitude and these very conditions that she challenged so boldly in "Hombres necios, que acusáis a la mujer sin razón"? Is it not the terrible dissoluteness of the men of her time that she epitomizes with the words "Juntáis diablo, carne y mundo"?

To remedy this state of affairs, the church began to build recogimientos. Some of these were for mujeres malas; others for widows, orphans, and single women. The Bishop of Puebla, Manuel Fernández de Santa Cruz, built a number of such recogimientos in his diocese, but they would not accommodate all the women clamoring for admission. His biographer writes:

Franqueadas las puertas de su Palacio empezaron à entrar por ellas en busca de su Pastor … muchas mugeres que deseaban guardar intacta la Flor de la pureza, que hasta entonces habian conservado, … pero recelaban timidas perderla ò por ser muy pobres, ò por ser por hermosas, muy perseguidas.10

Of the Bishop's efforts on their behalf the same writer says:

Compuesta ya en la forma dicha la Casa de las recogidas, determinò el Señor Don Manuel aplicar el remedio que le pedia la pureza de pobres nobles, y hermosas Doncellas para su resguardo; y aunque yà en la Ciudad avia un Collegio de Virgines, en que pudo assegurar algunas de las que reconocio en mayor peligro, assi por la corta capacidad de dicho Collegio, como por el numero de las pretendientes, tan crecido, que le viniera estrecho el mas espacioso Claustro, discurriò con su animo generoso, comprar la possession de cierto sitio, para eregir a las Flores de la Virginidad un Collegio; pero como cada dia escuchaban sus atentos oydos mas y mas clamores de pobres Doncellas, se hallò obligado à formarles dos Collegios, ô cerrados Huertos, donde negadas à el examen de la ossadia, conservassen intactos los candòres de su virginal pureza.

De los dos dichos Collegios, como de floridos Huertos, salieron muchas Doncellas a florecer transplantadas en Monasterios religiosos, en que manteniendo el credito de la virtud, subieron cõ presurosos pasos à la cumbre de la perfecciõ; otras sugetandose à las coyundas de el Matrimonio desempeñaron bien la buena educacion.…11

This was the state of affairs in the diocese of Puebla. In Guadalaxara and other places conditions were the same. How about Mexico City? The biographer of Domingo Pérez de Barcía says:

No puede negarse la heroicad, y grandeza de la obra de enclaustrar mugeres, que voluntariamente se retiren, huyendo del Mundo, y sus peligros, para no caer en sus lazos, ni dàr en sus precipios, viendose expuestas, yá por la libertad en que viven, yà por la necessidad en que se hallan à vender su hermosura, à costa de su honestidad, valiendose de sus cuerpos para perdicion de sus almas. De la grandeza de esta obra se via privada esta Ciudad de Mexico, y tan necessitada de ella, quanto se atendia de mugeres mas abastecida, que no pudiendo todas entrar en Monasterios, se lloraban en el siglo en manifiestos peligros.…12

He goes on to say that various attempts were made to establish recogimientos, but lack of funds always prevented the realization of the project. A Jesuit, Luis de San Vitores, even wrote a book on the need of a refugio, and13 finally, with the help of Father Xavier Vidal, a house big enough to accommodate six hundred women was built. But money was lacking for the maintenance of the place, and so Payo Henríquez de Ribera, Archbishop of Mexico from 1668 to 1680, was obliged to give the house to the Bethlemites for a hospital.14

During this time Juana was living at the viceregal court in la publicidad del siglo. She was the talk of the town because of her brilliant attainments. What her situation was she describes clearly in Los empeños de una casa:

Era de mi patria toda
El Objecto venerado
De aquellas adoraciones,
Que forma el comun aplauso,

…

Llegò la supersticion
Popular à empeño tanto
Que ya adoraban Deydad
El Idolo que formaron.

…

Que aviendo sido al principio
Aquel culto voluntario,
Llegò despues la costumbre,
Favorecida de tantos,
A hazer como obligatorio,
El festejo cortesano,

…

Sin temor en los concursos
Defendia mi recato
Con peligro del peligro,
Y con el daño del daño.

…

Mis padres en mi mesura,
Vanamente assegurados,
Se descuidaron comigo:
Que dictamen tan errado.15

She was a curiosity, a veritable monstruo de la naturaleza, and must have been the object of persistent and in many cases unwelcome attentions. If ordinary women were in danger, the beautiful Juana Inés certainly was. To be sure, she had the protection of the Viceroy. But how long would the Marquis of Mancera retain that office? In a change of administration what would be her fate? Her family was poor, and besides, in her day the chimney-corner for the spinster member of the family had not yet been heard of. Moreover, she was a criolla living at a Spanish court. She was therefore at its mercy. That her position was not safe, we may gather from the biography of her confessor:

… el Padre Antonio … aviendo conocido … lo singular de su erudicion junto con no pequeña hermosura, atractivos todos á la curiosidad de muchos, que desearian conocerla, y tendrian por felicidad el cortejarla, solia decir, q no podia Dios embiar asote mayor a aqueste Reyno, que si permitiesse, que Juana Ines se quedara en la publicidad del siglo.16

He goes on to tell why she left the convent of St. Joseph and adds: "… le fue forçoso salir, y buscar otro puerto en donde atendiendo cõ menos peligros de enfermedad … se viesse libre de las muchas olas que la amenazaban."17 Her biographer, Father Calleja, expresses the same idea. She realized, he says, that "… la buena cara de una muger pobre es una pared blanca donde no hay necio, que no quiera echar su borron: que aun la mesura de la honestidad sirve de riesgo, porque ay ojos, que en el yelo deslizan mas: …"18 And she herself says of this step: "… con todo, para la total negacion que tenia al Matrimonio, era lo menos desproporcionado y lo mas decente, que podia elegir en materia de la seguridad … de mi salvacion."19

It was, undoubtedly, necessary for her to retire from public life at court. There was no recogimiento where she might live until she could decide definitely on her future occupation. She was, therefore, practically forced to choose convent life, or be at the mercy of the world. Juana Inés was, perhaps, even lucky to get into a convent, for there was not room for all who applied. With the powerful influence, however, of the Viceroy and of Father Núñez, a haven was found for her. The influence of the latter in this decisive step is not to be overlooked. He it was who finally persuaded her and hastened the ceremony lest the devil should tempt, meanwhile, his beloved Juana Inés.

We may safely conclude that the deep, underlying reason for Juana's retirement from the world is to be found in the social conditions of her time. She was persuaded to take the step, too, in the hope of being somewhat favorably situated for a continuation of her intellectual labors. And when she came under the influence of that powerful norte de la Inquisición, the pious Father Núñez, she accepted his advice and took the veil. That she tried convent life a second time shows what serious and what pressing reasons she had for taking the step.

II

Another question recently brought to the fore is whether Juana should properly be called Juana de Asbaje or Juana Ramírez. Amado Nervo, writing in 1910, called her Juana de Asbaje. Fernández del Castillo, writing in 1920,20 calls her Juana Ramírez, and insists that this is correct, since she herself signed her name that way. He tries to prove that she was related to the Hernán Cortés family on her mother's side, her mother's name being Isabel Ramírez de Santillana. Speaking of her name, he says:

Sor Juana, según el uso actual, debería de llevar el apellido Asvaje, que era el de su padre,… pero en aquella época cada hijo llevaba, diferente apellido, lo que origina no pocos trastornos en las investigaciones genealógicas; de suerte que, aun cuando le correspondía el apellido Asvaje, como ella firmaba Juana Ramírez, ese es el suyo verdadero, con el que se le debe mencionar, y así consta en su retrato que se conserva en el Museo Provincial de Toledo.…21

The inscription on the picture mentioned reads: "En el siglo fue conocida por D.a Juana Ramirez (por ˜q assi firmaba)."22 A careful study of this document shows that it is incorrect on two points. The author of the inscription goes on to say: "Tomo el Havito de Religiosa en el Convto dl Eximio D.r de la Iglesia S.a Geronimo de esta Ciud. de Mex.co 24 de Feb.o de 1668 a.s a los 17. de su edad.…" This is inaccurate as to her age, for she was only sixteen. Another error in the inscription is the following: "… haviendo vivido 44 años, 5 meses, 5 dias, y 5 horas." It should read: "43 años, 5 meses, etc." It seems possible, therefore, that the writer was also mistaken in regard to her signature. But Fernández del Castillo goes on to say:

Se podría objetar que el retrato de la religiosa que se conserva en Toledo es muy posterior a la muerte de la poetisa, pero habiendo sido sacado según datos tomados del Convento de San Jerónimo en donde vivió, es claro que las religiosas sabrían cual era el verdadero nombre de Sor Juana.23

It is, in fact, more than likely that in the convent of St. Jerome she was always thought of as Juana Ramírez, rather than as Juana de Asbaje. It is a well-known fact that her mother was a criolla and her father a Spaniard (Basque). As Juana Ramírez she was a criolla. As Juana de Asbaje she was Spanish. It is also a well-known fact that in Mexico at that time the only avenues of preferment open to the criollos were the university and the church. In fact, so strong were the criollos becoming in the church during the seventeenth century that by the time of the Marquis of Mancera the Augustinians were demanding that all candidates for admission to the order be native born.24 This caused constant bickering between the two factions. The convent of St. Jerome belonged to the Augustinian order. To enter it, therefore, one had to be a native of New Spain. That such was the case the following passage shows:

Estaba yá para tomar el Avito cierta doncella, en el Convento de S. Geronimo, y no teniendo la dote para ello, entraba con nombramiento de algunos, que en dicho convento ay dotados; pero al fin, se advirtiò faltarle a esta doncella una de las condiciones, que la fundacion pedia; conviene, a saber, el que sean nacionales de Mexico, y esta no lo era; por lo qual huvosele de impedir su entrada.…25

When one considers that this was a foundation for criollos, that the hatred between the natives and the governing class was increasing, and that toward the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth this hatred was becoming more and more open, one can well understand why the nuns of St. Jerome might have given out that Sor Juana was Juana Ramírez. To date, however, no such signature has been found.

There is evidence, on the other hand, that while she was at the viceregal court she went by the name of Asbaje. In 1668 Diego de Ribera published a poem by Doña Iuana Ynés de Asuage.26 In November of the preceding year Juana had left the convent of St. Joseph. If she was known as Juana de Asbaje in 1668 she must have been so called before she entered the convent in August, 1667. In other words, this was certainly her name at court. It was, undoubtedly, to her advantage to go by her Spanish name as lady-in-waiting to the Vicereine. Whether she had been known as Juana Ramírez before she went to court nobody knows. It is possible that the criollos knew her by that name. However, in the absence of more definite proof favoring the name Ramírez it seems preferable to continue to call her Asbaje since we know that she actually went by that name in 1668.

An easier question to answer is: Which name did she herself prefer? In the Libro de Prophessiones of the convent of St. Jerome she wrote: "Yo soror Jua ynes de la chruz hija legima de don po de asvaje y bargas machuca Y de isabel rramires, etc."27 It will be noticed that she signs her father's name in full. This seems to indicate that at that time she preferred that name. Vargas Machuca is an honored name in the annals of Spanish arms, and the name Asbaje aligned her with the Basques, who must be credited with notable achievements in the New World. Was she a criolla or a Spaniard at heart? Her works show both tendencies. With their publication, however, she seems to have put herself definitely on the Spanish side. Her second volume, which appeared in Seville in 1692, was dedicated to Don Juan de Orue y Arbieto, a Basque. In that dedication she says: "… siendo, como soy Rama de Vizcaya, y Vm. de sus nobilissimas familias de las Casas de Orue y Arbieto, vuelvan los frutos à su tronco, y los arroyuelos de mis discursos tributen sus corrientes al Mar à qui reconocen su Orig." In some of her works she even used the Basque dialect. She was proud of her Basque ancestry. This, too, argues in favor of the name Asbaje.

III

Another question that has been discussed is: Why did Juana, when she was at the height of her fame, renounce fame? It seems impossible at first glance that Sor Juana, having made herself famous, having earned the title of la décima musa, and having published in Spain two volumes of poetry, should suddenly renounce her intellectual labors, her mathematical and musical instruments, her library of four thousand volumes, and everything that for her made life worth living to devote herself to a life of cilices and scourges, fasts and vigils. She had lived in the convent of St. Jerome a quarter of a century. She had lived on terms of intimacy with the most prominent people of the city. In Spain she had been the object of dozens of laudatory poems and articles. But for the second time in her life she suddenly retired from the world, and this time it was to lead the life of an ascetic, the life of a martyr. Why?

The blame for this strange renunciation has been generally laid at the door of the Bishop of Puebla, Manuel Fernández de Santa Cruz. A few attributed it to the Inquisition or to Father Núñez. Others have frankly declared it inexplicable. To understand the situation, let us go back and review briefly the preceding period in the life of Sor Juana.

In the year 1680 a new viceroy, the Count of Paredes, came to Mexico. The cabildo of the cathedral asked Juana to write a poem for one of the arcos erected in his honor. Placed thus in the limelight, it is not surprising that a friendship developed between Juana and the Count and Countess of Paredes. This was the beginning of a brilliant and happy period for the gifted nun. Her new patrons encouraged her in her literary ambitions. It was for them that she wrote some of her best works. During their residence in New Spain, Sor Juana devoted much more time than the church approved of to worldly things. The Viceroy and his wife were frequent visitors at the convent. The nun became very popular in court circles, and was the object of many attentions, of gifts, of letters, of poems. She was in constant contact with the world. She was in such demand socially that she could hardly find time for her literary work. In the spring of 1688, however, her patrons returned to Spain. With their departure Juana lost her most powerful protectors in New Spain. Though on friendly terms with the Conde de Galve, viceroy from 1688 to 1696, there was not the strong personal bond that bound her to his predecessor. It is to the Countess of Paredes that we owe the first volume of Juana's works.

The period just sketched had disastrous consequences for Sor Juana. Her worldly life brought down upon her the criticism of the more sinister, the more fanatical element in the church. Father Núñez broke off all relations with her. Oviedo says in this connection:

Bien quisiera el Padre Antonio que tan singulares prendas se dedicassen solo á Dios, y que entendimiento tan sublime tuviesse solo por pasto las divinas perfecciones del Esposo que avia tomado. Y aunque se han engañado muchos, persuadidos, á que el Padre Antonio le prohibia â la Madre Iuana el exercicio decente de la Poesia sanctificado con los exemplos de grandes siervos, y siervas de Dios, estorvabale si quãto podia la publicidad, y continuadas correspondencias de palabra, y por escrito con los de fuera; y temiendo que el affecto a los estudios por demasiado no declinasse al extremo de vicioso, y le robasse el tiempo que el estado santo de la Religion pide de derecho … le aconsejaba con las mejores razones que podia, á que agradecida al cielo por los dones conque la avia enriquecido olvidada del todo de la tierra pusiera sus pesamientos … en el mismo cielo.

Viendo pues el Padre Antonio, que no podia conseguir lo que desseaba, se retirò totalmente de la assistencia à la Madre Juana.…28

Father Núñez was one of the most powerful ecclesiastics in New Spain. Because of his learning he was popularly known as the "encyclopedia of the Jesuits." There is plenty of evidence to show that all important cases of the Inquisition passed through his hands. The break,29 therefore, between him and Sor Juana was a most serious matter. The fact that Father Núñez disapproved of her conduct must have ranged against her some of the other intolerant churchmen of the time, such men as José Vidal and the Archbishop himself.

The latter was something of a fanatic. His character was very different from that of his precedessor, the much esteemed Fray Payo in whose honor Juana wrote several poems. Her relations with Aguiar y Seixas must have been quite different, for she never mentions him. If the biographer of the Archbishop is to be trusted, there was probably a good reason why he and Juana were not on intimate terms. He says:

Para remediar los pecados importa mucho el quitar las rayzes de ellos: en esto ponia el Señor Arçobispo mucho cuydado. Una causa muy principal de muchos pecados, suelen ser las comedias, y fiestas de toros; por lo qual aborrecia mucho su Ill.ma estas, y otras semejantes fiestas, à que concurren muchos de todo genero de personas, hombres y mugeres. Predicaba con gran acrimonia contra estos toros, y comedias, y los estorvò siempre que pudo: quando andabamos en las visitas mandaba que en las solemnidades de los Santos, aunque fuessen titulares, no huviesse semejantes fiestas;…

Otro medio de que usaba el Señor Arçobispo para desterrar los vicios, y plãtar las virtudes, era el procurar acabar con los libros profanos de comedias, y otros; y repartir libros devotos. Quando venimos de España, truxo unos mil y quinientos libros, que se intitulan Consuelo de pobres, que tratan con especialidad de la limosna, para repartirlos entre los ricos, y trocarlos por otros libros malos; y assi lo hazia. Persuadia à los libreros, que no tomassen libros de comedias; y trocò con algunos de ellos todos quantos tenian por los dichos arriba de consuelo de pobres: y luego quemaba los de las comedias.…30

That Aguiar was a bitter enemy of the worldly life of the times is shown by the following extract from a contemporary:

Il Lunedi 27. dovea andare la Signora V. Regnia, con suo marito, in S. Agostino de las Cuevas, invitati dal Tesoriere della Casa della moneta; ma poi se n'astennero, per far cosa grata a Monsignor Arcivescovo, il quale biasimava quel passatempo, como scandaloso.31

Life in Mexico changed under his administration. It took on a gloomier aspect. Many festival days were abolished,32 and an effort was made to reform the habits and customs of the people.

Under such an archbishop Juana passed the last days of her life. That Juana wrote comedias and even published them must have been a crime in his eyes. In Mexico during his administration no comedias and almost no secular verse were finding their way into print.33 Conditions in Mexico were quite different from what they were in Spain, though even in Spain a movement which opposed the theater was gaining ground. Conditions in Spain, nevertheless, were liberal as compared with those that obtained in New Spain. What the difference was becomes plain when we consider that the books of Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda which were taken off the Index abroad (even the celebrated Mística Ciudad de Dios being cleared by the Pope)34 were prohibited in Mexico by an edict of the Inquisition in 1690.35 Moreover, the fact that Sor Juana's works appeared in Spain is significant. This was due to the strict censorship36 on books that existed in New Spain, rather than to other difficulties of publication such as expense and scarcity of paper. The fact that of all her works the most popular one in Mexico was a religious work, the many times reprinted Ofrecimientos para un Rosario de quince Misterios, is also highly significant. One is forced to the conclusion that the publication of her collected works would have been impossible in Mexico. The fact that she published them in Spain must have widened the breach that was gradually establishing itself between her and the church. The first volume of her works appeared in Madrid in 1689. It contains a large number of secular poems: lyrics of love and friendship, satirical verse, and burlesque poems in the Italian manner. Whether the book came back to Mexico I do not know. But enough information about it must have traveled back to make things slightly uncomfortable for Juana.

At about this same time Sor Juana committed another crime in the eyes of the church. She wrote a refutation of a sermon preached in Lisbon by the brilliant Jesuit, Antonio de Vieyra. The latter had set up his own opinion in opposition to that of the Church Fathers, Aquinas, Augustine, and Chrysostom. Juana defended the Church Fathers with logic and erudition. Her refutation found its way into the hands of Manuel Fernández de Santa Cruz. He had it published late in 1690,37 together with a letter, the famous letter signed Sor Philotea de la Cruz. In it he said in part:

Para que V. md. se vea en este Papel de mejor letra, le he impresso, y para que reconozca los tesoros, que Dios depositò en su alma, y le sea, como mas entendida, mas agradecida … pocas criaturas deben a su Magestad mayores talentos en lo natural, con que executa al agradecimiento, para que si hasta aqui los ha empleado bien … en adelante sea mejor.

No es mi juizio tan austèro Censor, que estè mal con los versos, en que V. md. se ha visto tan celebrada.…

No pretendo, segun este dictamen, que V. md. mude el genio, renunciando los Libros; si no que le mejore, leyendo alguna vez el de Jesu-Christo.…Mucho tiempo ha gastado V. md. en el estudio de Filosofos, y Poetas; yà serà razon que se mejoren los Libros.38

This is the letter that has long been held responsible for Sor Juana's renunciation. It is quite clear from the letter that the Bishop did not really approve of her secular writings, but it is also clear that he did not ask her to give up her literary labors. All that he asked her to do was to devote herself to religious works. He was himself a lover of learning, and had during his youth written three books of commentary on the Scriptures. He is said to have bought many books for the Colegio de San Pablo in Pueblo. What gave the letter such force was the fact that it was printed along with the Crisis, and that in it he asked her to pay less attention to las rateras noticias del dia. It amounted to a public censure.39

Of the cause and effect of this letter, the biographer of the Bishop writes as follows:

Era muy celebrada en esta Nueva España la Madre Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz,… assi por la grande capazidad, y soverano entendimiento de que Dios la havia dorado, como por la gracia de saber hazer y componer … versos: con esta ocasion era visitada de muchas personas, y de las de primera clase: corria la fama por todas partes …; llegò la noticia à nuestro amantissimo Obispo …, y… condolido … de ´q un sujeto de tan relevantes prendas estubiera tan distraido, y combertido à las criaturas,… resolvio escrivirla la carta siguiente.…

Tubo esta carta el deseado efecto.…40

More than two years were to elapse, however, before Juana's renunciation. It does not seem possible, then, that this letter was the cause of the step she took. It was another sign of the times, however, and a thorn in the flesh of the brilliant nun.

In March, 1691, Juana wrote an answer to the famous letter. Her letter is astonishingly frank. One wonders how she dared so reveal her innermost soul. Her answer could certainly have done nothing to mend matters.

Meanwhile, the Crisis was receiving wide publicity. In 1692 it was published in Mallorca. In the same year it was reprinted in the second volume of her works, and in the following year it appeared again in the second edition of that volume.41 It was received with great enthusiasm in Spain. Why did it arouse a storm of criticism in Mexico? Was it heretical? It was so considered there. In her answer to the Bishop Juana wrote:

Si el crimen està en la Carta Athenagorica, fue aquella mas que referir sencillamente mi sentir …? … Llevar una opinion contraria de Vieyra, fue en mi atrevimiento, y no lo fue en su Paternidad, llevarla contra los tres Santos Padres de la Iglesia?…ni faltè al decoro, que à tanto varon se debe.…Ni toquè à la Sagrada Compañia en el pelo de la ropa;…Quesi creyera se avia de publicar, no fuera con tanto desaliño como fue. Si es (como dize el Censor) Heretica, porquè no la delata?42

We gather from this that it was declared heretical. In Spain, however, Navarro Vélez, Calificador del Santo Oficio, declared that it contained nothing contrary to the faith.43 That it was so strongly condemned in Mexico is due to the fact that conditions there were different. The Jesuits were all powerful. They were practically in control of the Inquisition. Father Vieyra was a Jesuit, and it was felt that the Crisis was an attack on that order. How Father Núñez felt about it one can easily guess. Juana had brought herself face to face with the Inquisition. At the time she wrote her reply she had not been brought to trial. No record has been found to show that she ever was. It is not likely that the Inquisition would have waited more than two years to do so. It does not seem possible, then, that it was directly responsible for her renunciation.

Did Juana, upon receiving the Bishop's letter, immediately stop writing about secular things? Not at all. Early in 1691 she wrote a silva celebrating a victory won by the armada de Barlovento against the French off the coast of Santo Domingo. This was published the same year by Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora in his Trofeo de la justicia española. In 1692 she was still sending manuscripts abroad for the second edition44 of the second volume of her works. It seems likely that early in 1692 she was still writing some poetry and collecting it for that volume. Sometime in 1692 or 1693 she also wrote a poem thanking her newly found friends in Spain for the laudatory poems and articles which appeared in her second volume. This poem was never finished, and is probably her last work.

Sor Juana's renunciation took place in 1693.45 In March, 1691, when she wrote her answer to the Bishop, she was not yet ready for her great sacrifice. She still defended herself vigorously, claiming for herself the right to study. The letter is, in fact, a defense of the rights of women, a memorable document in the history of feminism. In the light of it, her renunciation is even more startling than it would be had the letter never been written. Yet in it she reveals, too, a struggle in which she was as a house divided against itself. What it was and how insidiously it undermined what a lifetime had built up, the following passage will make clear:

Pues aun falta por referir lo mas arduo de las dificultades;—faltan los positivos [estorvos], que directamente han traido à estorvar, y prohibir el exercicio. Quien no creerà, viendo tan generales aplausos, que he navigado viento en popa, y mar en leche, sobre las palmas de las aclamaciones comunes? Pues Dios sabe, que no ha sido assi: porque entre las flores de essas mismas aclamaciones, se han levantado, y despertado tales aspides de emulaciones, y persecuciones, quantas no podrè contrar; y los que mas nocivos, y sensibles para mi han sido, no son aquellos, que con declarado odio, y malevolencia me han perseguido, sino los que amandome, y deseando mi bien … me han mortificado, y atormentado mas, que los otros, con aquel: No conviene a la santa ignorancia, que deben este estudio; se ha de perder, se ha de desranecer en tanta altura con su mesma perspicacia, y agudeza. Què me avrà costado resistir esto? Rara especie de martyrio, donde yo era el martyr, y me era el verdugo!… todo ha sido acercarme mas al fuego de la persecucion, al crisol del tormento: y ha sido con tal extremo, que han llegado a solicitar, que se me prohiba el estudio.

… fuè tan vehemente, y podorosa la inclinacion à las Letras, que ni agenas reprehensiones (que he tenido muchas) ni propias reflexas (que he hecho no pocas) han bastado à que dexe de seguir este natural impulso, que Dios puso en mi: su Magestad sabe … que le he pedido, que apague la luz de mi entendimiento, dexando solo lo que baste para guardar su Ley, pues lo demàs sobra (segun algunos) en una muger; y aun hay quien diga, que daña.46

We gather from this that she was the object of constant persecution, and to such a degree that she began to ask herself if, after all, she was wrong. Should she give up her literary labors and devote herself to the camino de perfección? This was the struggle that was going on in her soul and that reached a climax in 1693. It had probably been going on a long time before it came out into the open with the publication of her works. She must have had many enemies. What she suffered we can but guess. Slowly but surely the criticisms of friends and enemies destroyed her peace of mind. Even so, it is doubtful if Sor Juana would ever have given up her books and studies had not events in Mexico so shaped themselves that she felt upon her an inward compulsion.

It now becomes necessary to take a look at what was happening in Mexico between 1691 and 1693. In the summer of 1691 rains and floods were beginning to cause terrible suffering. A contemporary writes:

Lo q.e se experimento de trabajos en Mexico en estos trece dias no es ponderable. Nadie entrava en la Ciudad por no estar andables los caminos, y las calsadas. Faltò el carbon, la leña, la fruta, las hortalisas, las aves.…Elpannose sasonaba por la mucha agua … y nada se hallava de quanto hè dicho, sino à exsecivo precio.…

El crecimiento con qe se hallava la Laguna de Tescuco à veinte y dos de Julio, dio motivo a los pusilamines para que dixesen à vozes que se anega Mexico.47

The crops were ruined and by the end of the year the city was in the grip of a famine. By the beginning of 1692 conditions were so bad that the Viceroy asked that secret prayers be said in convents and monasteries for the relief of the city. Many a day there was no bread. Moreover, the supply of grain in the alhóndiga was getting low. The populace began to threaten violence, blaming the Viceroy and his government for their sufferings. Finally, on the night of June 8, 1692, the Indians marched upon the viceregal palace and stormed it, setting fire to it and the surrounding buildings. The Viceroy and his wife took refuge in the monastery of St. Francis. Everybody sought monasteries and other places of security. The soldiers were helpless. Hordes of Indians pillaged the plaza and the surrounding neighborhood. Nothing could be done to stop the terrible riot. Bells rang all night. In the nunneries and monasteries prayers were said. Jesuits and Franciscans went in procession to the plaza in an effort to quiet the rioters, but they were hissed and their images were treated with disrespect. After days and nights of terror, during which the churches ceased to function, the civil government succeeded in restoring order. Weeks and months of azotados and ahorcados kept alive the memory of the tumult. Famine continued to take its toll, for there was no bread. Disease followed. Toward the end of the year the peste was general throughout the land. Those were dark days for Mexico. Why had this affliction visited the country? The consensus of opinion was that it was a punishment for the sin, the license and irreligiosity that had reigned in Mexico. Robles says:

Las causas de este estrago se discurren ser nuestras culpas que quiso Dios castigar, tomando por instrumento el mas debil y flaco, como es el de unos miserables indios, desprevenidos, como en otros tiempos lo ha hecho su Divina Magestad, como parece por historias divinas y humanas.… Dios nos mire con ojos de misericordia! Amen.48

Sigüenza y Góngora says, speaking of the floods: "Oyese por este tiempo una voz entre las … del bulgo q.e atribuia à castigo de las pasadas fiestas la tempestad en el monte, el destroso en los Campos, y la inundacion de los arribales.…"49 He says, furthermore: "… yo no dudo q.e mis pecados y los de todos le motivaron [a Dios] à q.e amenazandonos como Padre con azote de agua prosiguiese despues el castigo con hambre p.a nuestra poca enmienda.…"50 Another contemporary writes: "… hallándonos con un príncipe tan benigno por virey, … son tantos nuestros pecados, que no ha bastado su santidad y celo para que la justicia de Dios no nos castigue, como lo estamos esperimentando."51

The tragic events just narrated gave point to the remonstrances addressed to Juana on the score of her failure to walk in the camino de perfección. Where she had before stopped to reflect occasionally on her duty in the matter, now, with suffering and death on every hand, her own heart, her own conscience, must have taken a hand. It is not unlikely that she blamed herself somewhat for the sad state of affairs in Mexico. Death was everywhere. It took two of her lifelong friends, Juan de Guevara52 and Diego de Ribera.52 It laid a heavy hand on the convent of St. Jerome, where ten nuns died53 between April 24, 1691, and August 5, 1692. And in September, 1692, news came from Spain of the death of her beloved patron, the Count of Paredes. Life was becoming stern. But it was not too late. She could yet make amends. It is something of this spirit that shines through the fanaticism of the last two years of her life. Stern religious counselors had turned her eyes inward upon herself. Could outward compulsion alone have worked such a change? Does it not bespeak inward conviction? Sor Juana had very much a mind of her own. The Inquisition could have made her give up her books, her instruments, her literary labors, but it could not make her volar a la perfección. Inner conviction was needed for that.

Does not Juana herself express this in the Peticion que en forma causidica presenta al Tribunal Divino la Madre Juana Ines de la Cruz, por impetrar perdon de sus culpas? In it she says:

… en el pleyto que se sigue en el Tribunal de nuestra Justicia contra mis graves, enormes, y sin igual pecados, de los quales me hallo convicta por todos los testigos del Cielo, y de la Tierra, y por lo alegado por parte del Fiscal del crim de mi propia consciencia, en que halla que debo ser condenada à muerte eterna, y que aun esto serà usando conmigo de clemencia, por no bastar infinitos Infiernos para mis inumerables crimenes y pecados: … reconozco no merezco perdon … con todo, conociendo vuestro infinito amor, è misericordia, y que mientras vivo, estoy en tiempo, y que no me han cerrado los terminos del poder apelar de la sentencia … con todo, por quanto sabeis vos que ha tantos años que yo vivo en Religion, no solo sin Religion, sino peor que pudiera un Pagano: … es mi voluntad bolver à tomar el Abito, y passar por el año de aprobacion.…54

Undoubtedly force of circumstances joining hands with many parallel influences had brought about a crisis in Juana's life; not one cause, but many, working toward a common end, gradually broke the strong spirit and made her accept the martyr's rôle.

How did Juana carry out her penitence, for such it was? Oviedo says, speaking of this and of Father Núñez' part in it:

Quedose la Madre Iuana sola con su Esposo, y … el amor le daba alientos á su imitacion, procurando con empeño crucificar sus pasiones, y apetitos con tan ferveroso rigor en la penitencia, que necessitaba del prudente cuidado, y atencion del Padre Antonio para irle á la mano, porque no acabasse à manos de su fervor la vida. Y solia decir el Padre alabando à Dios, que Iuana Ines no corria sino que volaba á la perfeccion.55

Everything she had she sold for the relief of the poor. The same writer says:

… se deshizo de la copiosa libreria que tenia, sin reservar para su uso sino unos pocos libritos espirituales que le ayudassen en sus santos intentos. Echô tambien de la celda todos los instrumentos musicos, y mathematicos singulares, y exquisitos que tenia, y quantas alhajas de valor, y estima la avia tributado la admiracion, y aplauso de los que celebraban sus prendas como prodigios; y reducido todo à reales, fuerõ bastantes á ser alivio, y socorro de muchissimos Pobres.56

This, too, confirms the theory that the suffering in Mexico had much to do with her renunciation. She was joined in her charitable enterprise by Aguiar y Seixas, who also sold his library for the relief of the poor.

Two years later her penitence reached the heights of the heroic when, during the plague that invaded the convent of St. Jerome, Juana labored night and day nursing the sick, comforting the dying, and laying out the dead. Her fragile spirit, broken by the storms that had beaten about her, gave up the unequal struggle, and she who once had been the object of hatred and jealousy died in the odor of sanctity, revered and loved by all.

Notes

1. Juana de Asbaje (Madrid, 1910), p. 78.
2. Discurso pronunciado en la velada literaria que consagró el Liceo Hidalgo a la memoria de Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (Mexico, 1874), pp. 48-49.
3. For a discussion of this side of the question see Nemesio García Naranjo, "Biografía de Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz," Anales del Museo Nacional de México, segunda época, Vol. III, No. 1 (Mexico, 1906), pp. 567-68.
4. "Respuesta de la poetisa a la muy ilustre Sor Philotea de la Cruz," Fama y obras posthumas (Barcelona, 1701), p. 18. References hereafter will be to this edition.
5. Juan de Oviedo, Vida y virtudes del Venerable Padre Antonio Nuñes de Miranda (Mexico, 1702), p. 133.
6. Antonio de Robles, "Diario de sucesos notables," Documentos para la historia de Méjico, primera serie, Vol. III (Mexico, 1853), under date of July 12, 1668.
7. José Toribio Medina, Historia del tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición de México (Santiago de Chile, 1905), pp. 321-22. Part of this document is unprintable.
8. José Lezamis, Breve relacion de la vida, y muerte del Doctor D. Francisco de Aguiar y Seyxas, Mexico, 1699. Not paged. See chapter entitled: "De su castidad, mortificacion, y penitencia."
9. Op. cit., pp. 153-54.
10. Miguel de Torres, Dechado de principes eclesiasticos (Puebla, 1716), p. 123.
11. Op. cit., pp. 124-25, 150. Also see José Gómez de la Parra, Panegyrico funeral de Manuel Fernandez de Santa Cruz (Puebla, 1699), p. 64.
12. Julián Gutiérrez Dávila, Vida y virtudes de Domingo Perez de Barcia (Madrid, 1720), pp. 27-28.
13. Op. cit., p. 30.
14. Ibid., p. 31.
15. Segundo tomo de las obras de Soror Juana Inez de la Cruz (Sevilla, 1692), Act I.
16. Juan de Oviedo, op. cit., p. 133.
17. Ibid., pp. 134-35.
18. "Aprobación," Fama y obras posthumas.
19. Fama y obras posthumas, p. 18. As for matrimony, it is possible that the Viceroy had already selected a husband for her. This seems to have been the regular procedure, at any rate, and Juana had no reason to suppose that he would not select one in her case. Doña Oliva Merleti, a lady-in-waiting at the court, entered the Capuchin order in preference to marrying a man selected for her by the Marquis of Mancera. See Ignacio de Peña, Trono mexicano en el convento de Capuchinas (Madrid, 1726), p. 213.
20. Francisco Fernández del Castillo, Doña Catalina Xuárez Marcayda (Mexico, 1920).
21. Op. cit., p. 83.
22. For a copy of this document see Amado Nervo, op. cit., opp. p. 96.
23. Loc. cit.
24. Vicente Riva Palacio, México a través de los siglos (Mexico: Ballescá y Cía), II, 669.
25. Julián Gutiérrez Dávila, op. cit., pp. 351-52.
26. This appeared in Poetica descripcion de la pompa plausible que admiró esta Ciudad de Mexico en la Dedicacion de su Templo (Mexico, 1668). This is cited by Medina, La Imprenta en México (8 vols.; Santiago de Chile, 1907-12), No. 1004. A copy of this work exists in the Biblioteca Palafoxiana in Puebla, Mexico.
27. This manuscript is now in my possession. González Obregón was the first to reproduce any part of it. See EL RENACIMINETO, SEGUNDA ÉPOCA (Mexico, 1894), pp. 237-38.
28. Op. cit., pp. 134, 136.
29. It is impossible to fix the exact date of this rupture. It must have taken place at some time during Juana's greatest worldly activity, i.e., between 1680 and 1690.
30. Op. cit., chapter entitled: "De la oracion, contemplacion, amor de Dios y del proximo del Señor Arçobispo."
31. Gio. Francesco Gemelli Careri, Giro del mondo, sesta parte (Naples, 1700), p. 169. He visited Mexico in 1697.
32. Francisco Aguiar y Seixas, Edicto pastoral sobre los días festivos, Mexico, 1688.
33. Less than 25 per cent of the books printed in Mexico City were secular in character. These figures are based on tables developed from Medina, La imprenta en México, for the period between 1682 and 1698. From 1666 to 1682 about 32 per cent of the books were secular. These figures are only approximate since Medina is not complete, and besides, some of the material of the period has, undoubtedly, been lost. Of these secular works some were official documents, some were gacetas, and a few were scholarly works. There was very little of a purely literary character.
34. Emilia Pardo Bazán, "Prólogo," Vida de la Virgen María según Sor María de Jesús de Agreda (Barcelona, 1899), p. 7.
35. Antonio de Robles, op. cit., under date of September 24, 1690.
36. The censorship in Mexico during the seventeenth century has not yet been studied. For methods used during the sixteenth see Francisco Fernández del Castillo, "Libros y libreros del siglo XVI," Publicaciones del archivo general de la nación, Vol. VI (Mexico, 1914).
37. Her refutation was reprinted under the title of "Crisis de un Sermón" in the second volume of her works.
38. Fama y obras posthumas, pp. 2-4.
39. The signature, Philotea de la Cruz, is pregnant with meaning. The name itself means "lover of God." The Bishop pretended that the letter was written by a nun of that name in the convent of the Holy Trinity. There may have been a nun of that name. But why did the Bishop choose that name? One of his predecessors in the bishopric of Puebla, the famous Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, published in Madrid in 1659 a book called Peregrinacion de Philotea al santo templo y monte de la Cruz. He says it was written in imitation of a "Philotea Francesa" because it had seemed to him "no inutil emulacion, sino espiritual y santa: que … otra Philotea Española instruyesse a las demas, con manifestarse humilde seguidora de la Cruz.…"The books of Palafox were very popular. It is probable that Fernández de Santa Cruz had this book in mind when he wrote Sor Juana. If so, the significance of the signature could not have been lost upon her.
40. Op. cit., pp. 416, 421. The 1722 edition says that it was her estudio de libros profanos that called forth the letter.
41. The subject of the Crisis was kept alive until 1731, when a defense of Father Vieyra's sermon, written by Sor Margarita Ignacia, a Portuguese nun, was translated into Spanish by Iñigo Rosende in a volume entitled Vieyra impugnado, published in Madrid.
42. Fama y obras posthumas, pp. 50-51.
43. Juan Navarro Vélez, "Censura," Segundo tomo de las obras de Soror Juana Ines de la Cruz, Sevilla, 1692.
44. This edition, published in Barcelona in 1693, has on the title-page: "añadido en esta segunda impression por su autora." It also contains some villancicos dated 1691.
45. Both Oviedo and Calleja testify to this. The date can be established by the fact that in February and March, 1694, she signed her Profesión de la fe and the Renovación de los votos religiosos. To do this she must have served her year as novice. Her Petición, undated, says: "… es mi voluntad bolver a tomar el Abito, y passar por el año de aprobacion." This must have been written early in 1693.
46. Fama y obras posthumas, pp. 15, 26-27, 34-35.
47. Copia de una Carta de don Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora a don Andrés de Pez acerca de un tumulto acaecido en México (MS), August 30, 1692.
48. Op. cit., p. 97.
49. Letter cited.
50. Ibid.
51. "Copia de una carta escrita por un religioso grave," Documentos para la historia de México, segunda serie, III (Mexico, 1855), 311.
52. Sucesos, 1676-96 (MS), under date of April 11 and September 7, 1692.
53. Libro de Prophessiones.
54. Fama y obras posthumas, pp. 129-31.
55. Op. cit., p. 137.
56. Loc. cit.

Los empeños de una casa (drama) 1683

Amor es más laberinto [with Juan de Guevara] (drama) 1689

Inundacion castalida de la unica poetisa, musa decima (poetry and dramas) 1689

"Carta atenagórica" (letter) 1690

El divino Narciso (drama) 1690

"Respuesta a Sor Filotea de la Cruz" (letter) 1692

Segundo volumen de las obras (poetry, dramas, and prose) 1692

Fama y obras pósthumas del fenix de Mexico, dezima musa, poetisa americana (poetry, dramas, and prose) 1700

Obras completas. 4 vols. (poetry, dramas, and prose) 1951-57

The Pathless Grove (poetry) 1960

SOURCE : Arenal, Electa. “The Convent as Catalyst for Autonomy: Two Hispanic Nuns of the Seventeenth Century.” In Women in Hispanic Literature, edited by Beth Kurti Miller, pp. 147-83. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983.
In the following excerpt, Arenal offers a feminist reassessment of Sor Juana’s life and work, discussing not only the “Respuesta” but also portions of several poems and plays.

Until recently, scholars have regarded Saint Teresa of Avila as an isolated instance of a woman of great energy and spirit, the epitome of the unique fusion of the real and the ideal in Spanish life and letters¹. But the discovery of significant numbers of neglected manuscripts suggests that she was not alone, that around her and in her wake came other dynamic and contemplative women.² One of these was Venerable Madre Isabel de Jesús (1586-1648). She was an illiterate Castilian shepherdess and visionary, who struggled for twenty-five years to become a nun. Another, of quite different stamp, was Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648-1695) of New Spain, who previewed the coming age of Enlightenment and defended the right of women to exercise and live by their minds. Without rivals in intellectual scope or artistic projection, the Mexican nun left poetry, plays, and prose, which were not compiled and edited until more than two hundred and fifty years after her death.³

Unlike Sor Juana, who was recognized in her own time as being among the greatest intellects and literary talents of the period, Madre Isabel lived in relative obscurity in a self-generated world of religious visions. Sor Juana wrote an autobiographical “letter” not as a literary endeavor but as the defense of an intellectual life in answer to attacks by her superiors; Madre Isabel dictated her life at the request of her superiors, again not as a literary endeavor but as a religious exercise. Sor Juana’s autobiography is unique; Madre Isabel’s resembles in effect hundreds of lives written in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Spain and its colonies with the aim of inspiring emulation in the faithful.⁴

For centuries, most of the women who in Virginia Woolf’s phrase had “a room of their own” found it in the cloister.⁵ As Emily James Putnam stated in The Lady: Studies of Certain Significant Phases of Her History, “No institution in Europe has ever won for the lady the freedom of development that she enjoyed in the convent. . . . The impulse toward leadership which kept the men in the world sent the women out of it.”⁶ The cloister, which common opinion often represents as a refuge (or as a prison), was equally a place in which women could support each other and even cultivate a certain amount of independence. It provided women of greatly divergent personalities with a semiautonomous culture in which they could find sustenance, exert influence, and develop talents they never could have expressed as fully in the outside world. In that sense, the convent was a catalyst for autonomy. It is ironic that the greater inequality of women in Hispanic culture, a result in part of the strength and pervasiveness of the Church, made the very source of restrictions an outlet for freer expression. In effect, nuns found a way of being important in the world by choosing to live outside it.

Despite the rigor of convent life, there was room for variation, even eccentricity, as the lives of these two very different women illustrate. Madre Isabel, a poor shepherdess, worked as a domestic servant both in and out of the convent; Sor Juana, from a moderately wealthy land-holding family, was close to the most privileged ranks of society. Madre Isabel was uneducated; Sor Juana was an acknowledged prodigy. Peasant and aristocrat, poor and rich, illiterate and intellectual—the convent, echoing the outer world, held and maintained these contrasts in social status.

One of the aims of this chapter is to add a few threads to the reweaving of the tapestry of women’s history and literature. Madre Isabel’s was recorded experience is part of the background against which Sor Juana’s life and thought stands out in sharp relief. The juxtaposition of these two seventeenth-century lives provides us a more complete picture of the times and of the reactions of women within it. Many more women’s lives resembled Madre Isabel’s than Sor Juana’s. In belief, religious ideas, and intellectual set, even the women of the upper classes were closer to the Spanish peasant mystic than to the Mexican preencyclopedist. The Spanish nun conforms to the climate of the times. Her road to exceptionality was a more allowable one; along the route of mysticism and of “holy ignorance,” she reached the point of being able to exert influence. Sor Juana was a central figure in the cultural and intellectual life of the court of New Spain. She brilliantly refuted the concept of “holy ignorance” but was refused confession for this defiance—and ultimately capitulated or converted.

Because there is a tendency to regard those women who entered convents simply as nuns—as religious figures—they have been missed as people. Both Sor Juana and Isabel de Jesús felt guilt for taking time out to write (or dictate); both were clever and found ways of getting around obstacles such as the resentments or rulings of confessors and superiors. Although neither attained the political and economic power Putnam discusses (which medieval abbesses held), both struggled for self-realization. And this can be attributed to the fact that they were nuns. Since they were women outside of their sexual function in society—“disembodied” and seen more as spirit than as matter—they were free to deal with philosophical and spiritual issues.

Sor Juana presided as might a philosopher queen over a salon; in her own society, Madre Isabel, a kind of mystical madwoman, was called upon to give advice, make predictions, console those who mourned, and encourage those who wavered. Both held positions of respect within the convent, and both dedicated time to caring for their sisters. For Sor Juana the convent was the least of evils; for Isabel it was the last stop before heaven. For both of them it was essential, allowing them to consider themselves the equals, if not the superiors, of the men around them. Both explicitly claim such equality, Sor Juana by virtue of intellect, Isabel by virtue of spirit. . . .

The Life and Work of a Well-Known Poet

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, the great Mexican poet, playwright, and intellectual, last of the great seventeenth-century Hispanic Baroque writers, was born Juana Inés Ramírez y Asbaje, in the colony then called New Spain. She was known as a gongorista, after the Spanish mannerist poet, Góngora. Quevedo, Gracián, and Calderón were her contemporaries.

Juana Ramírez lived at the hub of New Spain’s vice regal society, the most splendid and complex of the Spanish colonial empire. Five vice regal regimes succeeded each other during her lifetime. By education, she belongs to medieval scholasticism and Renaissance humanism; in her poetic and dramatic output to the Baroque or mannerist period; in her intellectual orientation to the dawning of the Age of Reason. But Sor Juana cannot be categorized because her genius and her womanhood prevented her from becoming part of a particular school or university tradition; the educational isolation which she at times lamented kept her in touch with herself.

Sor Juana, like most geniuses, was ahead of her time. Exceptionality, however, is treated differently in men than in women. What I want to suggest is not that we forget that Sor Juana was a woman but that we must reverse the manner in which we respond to that fact. Because Sor Juana Inés is one of the only two women who figure consistently and universally in the annals of Hispanic literary history before the nineteenth century, her position has an importance for women that it does not have for men.

The lives of Sor Juana and Saint Teresa are exceptions that prove the oppressive rule. Besides extraordinary talent and production, it took unusual circumstances and potent sources of support for both St. Teresa and Sor Juana to prevail. Could they have been the only women of such talent? Were they not perhaps the only ones with the cluster of requirements needed to break through the barriers against the success of women in the public world? Saint Teresa had the support of her mystical union with God, and of some prestigious earthly beings as well. Sor Juana was called by her contemporaries “the Tenth Muse,”⁷ an epithet perpetuated by later scholars who have kept her ensconced on a literary pedestal.

Nancy Miller, in an essay on women’s autobiography in France, advances one hypothesis in this regard. Observing that maleness and humanity are conflated by both male authors and most critic-consumers of autobiography, she introduces the notion of a gender-bound reading: “I would propose . . . a practice of the text that would recognize the status of the reader as differentiated subject; a reading subject named by gender and committed in a dialectics of identification to deciphering the inscription of a female subject.”⁸ Miller’s proposed method will be kept in mind in this section.

Women—necessarily influenced by patriarchal culture and scholarship, but nevertheless, as women, reading differently—have contributed significantly to studies of Sor Juana. In bibliographies one of course finds many fewer works by women, and in the most widely distributed and popular anthologies even fewer.⁹ Well-trained and first-rate or first-rated women critics are rare; the paternalistic and condescending underpinnings of university and publishing systems do little to encourage a change.

And yet women played an essential role in publicizing Sor Juana’s work both during and after her lifetime. The marquise of Mancera, who doted on her, was a major affective support—if indeed a distraction—first in the court and later in the convent. She rescued Sor Juana from her first overly rigorous convent and visited her regularly in the second. A few years after the marquise’s death, the countess of Paredes, wife of the new vice regent, occupied her place in Sor Juana’s affections. A woman of culture who wrote poetry herself, she took Sor Juana’s poems and plays to Spain to have them published. She shares responsibility for the solid grounding of Sor Juana’s reputation in Spain and the colonies. Along with other figures of seventeenth-century literature, Sor Juana’s fame waned in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Serrano y Sanz doesn’t even mention the “Respuesta a Sor Filotea de la Cruz” (“Reply to Sister Filotea de la Cruz”) (1691) in summarizing Sor Juana’s life and work in his bio-bibliography of women writers.¹⁰ Pedro Henríquez Ureña and Manuel Toussaint began this century’s rediscovery. And a North American scholar, Dorothy Schons (1925), pioneered in finding documents, amplifying bibliography, investigating dates, and placing Sor Juana in her period. Her slim volumes and articles remain difficult to locate. Two other North American women scholars, Lota Spell (1947) and E. J. Gates (1939), also contributed to the research. Several Spanish and Spanish-American women scholars brought attention to Sor Juana.¹¹

If one accepts the concept of gender-linked reading, there follows an understanding of the special sense of identification, sympathy, and consequently, the recognition evident in the work of women who have approached the work of Sor Juana. For example, Anita Arroyo responds, with a conviction based on her own female experience, to the sources of Sor Juana’s torment and passion. Respecting Sor Juana’s reticence, she argues that the absence of total confession does not detract from the essential meanings of Sor Juana’s work. Arroyo also reviews briefly the contributions of women in a chapter on Sor Juana and the literary critics. Mirta Aguirre’s short but excellent book, Del encausto a la sangre: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (From Imperial Red Ink to Blood), and Rachel Phillips’s short essay “Sor Juana: Dream and Silence”¹² cut through mystifications and convolutions in tracing the probable chain of events—and Sor Juana—s reaction to them—which led to her silence and finally her death. As women, they respond more to the seriousness and less to the “charm” of her work.

Like Saint Teresa and Madre Isabel, Sor Juana displayed self-effacement and humility, on the one hand, and, on the other, competitiveness, ambition, and a quality that some would call arrogance, others self-assertion and confidence. In speaking of her trials and tribulations, she compares herself to Saint Peter, Saint Jerome, and to Christ himself. She emphasizes her dedication to her chosen vocation of study and learning; natural ability was complemented by constant hard work and frequently by contention with the material being studied or created as well as with surrounding circumstances.

Sor Juana transcended the demands of gender and the limitations of what are to this day called in Hispanic countries “the tasks proper to her sex” because of an unusual combination of factors, among them her having been a child prodigy. Already too strong in intellectual development at the age when precocity in women is directly or subtly stifled, her life did not take the course usual for a woman of her class. It was her own idea in 1655, at the age of seven, to ask her mother to dress her in men’s clothing and send her to the university in Mexico:

Teniendo yo después como seis o siete años, y sa-biendo ya leer y escribir, con todas las otras habilidades de labores y costuras que deprenden las mujeres, oí decir que había Universidad y Escuelas en que se estudiaban las ciencias, en Méjico; y apenas lo oí cuando empecé a matar a mi madre con instantes e importunos ruegos sobre que, mudán-dome el traje, me enviase a Méjico, en casa de unos deudos que tenía, para estudiar y cursar la Universidad.

(IV, 445-46; p. 78)

When I was about six or seven, having already learned to read and write, along with other skills such as embroidery and dressmaking which were considered appropriate for women, I heard that in Mexico City there was a university and schools where one could learn science. As soon as I heard that, I began to torture my mother with insistent and annoying pleas that she change my clothes and send me to live with relatives of hers in Mexico City so I could study at the university.

She had devoured the books in her maternal grandfather’s library near the provincial town of Amecameca; they had provided her with an unsystematic but thorough education. All the autobiographical anecdotes and episodes offered by Sor Juana in the “Respuesta” refer to her precocity, her self-discipline, and her drive: in sum, to her education. She laments the lack of teachers and of the stimulation of student peers, and she underscores the sense of loneliness that hindered her intellectual development. When, in 1665, at the age of seventeen, she became a lady-in-waiting at the court of the Marquises of Mancera, despite the fact that she was nurtured by a close and loving relationship with them, the court treated her as a freak. One event organized by the viceroys recalls the tests found in old fairy tales: there gathered at the palace a group of the most learned men to examine Juana in their respective disciplines. She astonished them all. She was paraded, shown off, and expected to produce original poems and plays for all occasions. This episode was not recorded in the “Respuesta” but in the short essay of her first biographer, Diego Calleja, whom later commentators followed.¹³ Sor Juana’s own reactions passed into her drama and verse.

Sor Juana’s switch from court to convent, which occurred when she was nineteen, was abrupt and remains partially unexplained. Nevertheless, in the “Respuesta” she says clearly:

Para la total negación que tenía al matrimonio, era lo menos desproporcionado y lo más decente que podía elegir.

(IV, 446; p. 78)

Given my complete opposition to the idea of marriage, it was the least shocking and most decent thing I could have chosen.

Her choice to stay in the world or to enter the convent she saw as fraught with difficulties for her main purpose in life, “de querer vivir sola; de no querer tener ocupación obligatoria que embarazase la libertad de mi estudio . . . el sosegado silencio de mis libros” (IV, 446; p. 79) (to live alone, to avoid any obligation which might disturb my freedom to study, the tranquil silence of my books). She chose religious life not because it was her true vocation but because it seemed the only way of attaining that purpose.

But Sor Juana’s abode in the cloister was no ascetic cell; on the contrary, it came to be more like a salon. She was visited by people at the upper levels of the Church, the vice regal family, scholars, writers, and travelers from abroad. According to Padre Calleja, her private library held four thousand volumes.¹⁴ She collected musical and scientific instruments. She became poet laureate, continuing to produce occasional poetry for lovers of the court, for birthdays, anniversaries, and deaths, and sacred poetry and plays for the celebrations of religious holidays at the great cathedrals of Mexico.

Writing played a major role in Sor Juana’s life from her teens until her early forties when, shortly after composing the “Respuesta a Sor Filotea,” she signed away in blood—literally—her earthly pursuits and, in effect, her life. At this time, tremendous external economic and political crisis coincided with her own experience of censorship, persecution, isolation, and disillusionment. For more than twenty years she had flourished under difficult circumstances, in which, nevertheless, the balance had been weighted toward recognition and support of her work.

Sor Juana’s tremendous drive helped her to cope with practical impediments and with her own emotional sensitivities. Convent routines and duties were demanding. And when there were moments for leisure, her sisters and the servants would often enlist her aid or attention, wishing mediation of quarrels, advice, conversation. Her description of her response to such demands is often quoted. She would give herself a period of ten days or so of solitude. Then her conscience would begin to prod her for neglecting her sisters, and she would put aside her own work and take up her social duties. A tone of muffled resentment characterizes her references to incursions on her time. One must recognize, on the other hand, the advantages that her privileged position offered her. Although it is perhaps true, as Sor Juana humorously claims, that Aristotle would have been a greater philosopher had he cooked, it is also certain that had she had to do more cooking—or sewing, or cleaning, or washing or ironing—she would not have produced the body of writing that she did.

In the “Respuesta,” Sor Juana describes her facility for writing as a double-edged gift. It encroached upon time she would have preferred to spend studying, and it provoked envy and resentment on the part of people of lesser talent. Reprimanded for her profane verse and rebuked for the theological trespass, as we shall see, she had good reason to describe herself as a writer only under duress.¹⁵ Although she may have considered some of the assignments as encumbrances, she accomplished most of what she did with intensity and polish. She felt sensitive pride in being one of the two (with Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora) official writers of the court.

Several studies have noted Sor Juana’s hyper-sensitivity—how she became enraged by the attacks of enemies, upset by the criticism of friends, vain, exhibitionistic, and grudge-bearing, and sensitive to a fault.¹⁶ But could it have been otherwise when she had been treated as an oddity from the beginning of her solitary childhood? In a sense her status as a “rare bird” gave her a perch for many years, though this same status was later to make her vulnerable to the attacks of those who resented her independence, her fame, and her exercise in scholastic discourse.

The ethical, philosophical, literary, and feminist implications of Sor Juana’s autobiographical essay and of her entire legacy have yet to be fully explored or disseminated. Why they have not been is in part a feminist question since it is related to the fact that it was not until three hundred years after her birth that her Obras completas —plays, poetry, and prose—were gathered together and published.¹⁷ Her secular theater includes two comedies, two one-act intermezzos (sainetes), fourteen dramatic poems (loas), and one soiree (sarao). The longest speech in Los empeños de una casa (The Trials of a [Noble] House ) is the female protagonist’s narrative of her life, in which Sor Juana put much of herself—experience, feelings, reactions—telling of the zeal with which she studied and learned, the spread of her fame, and of a disappointment in love (IV, 36-43). For the Church she wrote three sacramental plays(autos sacramentales), three dramatic preludes (loas) to these plays, and another El Divino Narciso (The Divine Narcissus ), one of the sacramental plays, and the loa written to precede it are considered her dramatic masterpieces. For Church celebrations she also wrote villancicos, sets of poems to be combined with prayers and masses, employing all the metric forms popular at the time. In the villancicos to Santa Catarina, Sor Juana identifies with this saint renowned for her wisdom:

De una Mujer se convencen

todos los Sabios de Egipto,

para prueba de que el sexo

no es esencia en lo entendido

(II, 171)

By a Woman all the Sages

of Egypt are convinced,

as proof that one’s sex

is not the essence of the mind.

Among these villancicos are poems in Nahuatl and Nahuatl and Spanish and several imitating the Spanish of the blacks, in which she expressed their resentment, resistance, and the urge for freedom.¹⁸ The fifty love poems have been debated and dissected for their confessional meanings. The discussions sometimes seem to obscure the fact that Sor Juana wrote some of the most beautiful love poems in the Spanish language, poems characterized by uncanny insight into human psychology.

Sor Juana’s most famous poem is the “Sátirafilosófica” (“Philosophical Satire”) , which begins, “Hombres necios, que acusáis” (I, 228-29) (Foolish men, who accuse). School children memorize it, but in the colleges it is not often enough seen in perspective as the culmination and refinement of a theme used and abused for several centuries, a masterful formal achievement, that sums up one of the debates between misogynists and philogynists so popular in that period. Sor Juana’s protest against sexual abuse and her humor in showing that women are damned if they do and damned if they don’t added a vibrancy to the poetic theme.¹⁹ In Sor Juana’s longest and perhaps her own favorite poem, “Primero suenoñ (I, 335-59) (“The First Dream”), she casts herself as Phaëthon, who dared to steer his carriage toward the sun. Moving through the philosophical knowledge of her day, as she seeks to unravel the nature of the universe and of thought, she describes the stages of her own intellectual development, its difficulties, and her final sense of failure.²⁰ Courtly poems and philosophical, historical, and mythological sonnets complete Sor Juana’s production in verse.

As is the case with most writers, there is autobiographical material throughout Sor Juana’s work. In addition to Leonor’s speech in Los empeños de una casa, the villancicos to Santa Catarina cited above, and the abstract yet significant “Primero sueño” there is the romance,“Señor: para responderos” , (“Sir, in response to you” ), in which Sor Juana answers “un caballero del Perú”(I, 136-39) (a gentleman from Peru) who had sent her verses suggesting that she turn into a man. Her rebuke seems relevant to modern ears accustomed to discussions of issues of masculinity and femininity and the search for androgyny:

porque acá Sálmacis falta,
en cuyos cristales dicen
que hay no sé qué virtud de
dar alientos varoniles.

Yo no entiendo de esas cosas;
sólo sé que aquí me vine
porque, si es que soy mujer,
ninguno lo verifique.

Y también sé que, en latín,
sólo a las casadas dicen
uxor, o mujer, y que
es común de dos lo Virgen

Con que a mí no es bien mirado
que como a mujer me miren,
pues no soy mujer que a alguno
de mujer pueda servirle;

y sólo sé que mi cuerpo,
sin que a uno u otro se incline,
es nuestro, o abstracto, cuanto
sólo el Alma deposite.

(I, 138)

For Salmacis is not to be found here
in whose crystal ball they say
there is I know not what power to
endow one with manly spirit.

I am not acquainted with such things:
I know only that I came here
so that, if indeed I am a woman
no one might be led to prove it.

And I also know that in Latin
only married women are called
uxor, or woman, and that
virginity is expected of both.

So that it is not considered correct
that I be seen as a woman
for I am not a woman
who serves as anyone’s woman;

and I know only that my body
without favoring one or another,
is neutral, or abstract, since
it houses only the Soul. . . .

Woman and wife are used synonymously in Spanish, which allows for the word play in the fourth stanza above. The most exaggerated analysis of these verses is to be found in Pfandl, who sees in them the declaration of her defective nature and her “psychic tragedy.”²¹

Sor Juana’s Respuesta a Sor Filotea is the major and most direct source of her autobiographical writing, and it is an essential document of seventeenth-century feminism.²² As I indicated earlier, there exists an abundance of still unstudied autobiographical documents by women of this period; some may eventually prove exceptional, though it is doubtful that any will be comparable with Sor Juana’s, which runs counter to the Counter-Reformation. No “holy ignorance” for her. The implication of all her writing is that she saw life as a loving labor in pursuit of knowledge. In the introduction to the second volume of her poems and plays, and again in the Respuesta, she uses a quotation from Saint Jerome that could stand as the epigraph to her work and as the epitaph on her tomb:

Quid ibi laboris insumpserim, quid sustinuerim difficultatis, quoties desperaverim, quotiesque cessaverim et contentione discendi rursus inceperim; testis est conscientia.

(IV, 451; p. 84)

Of the effort I made, of the difficulties I suffered through, of how many times I despaired, and how many others I gave up and started again in my determination to learn, my conscience is the witness.

It is unlikely that Sor Juana would have written this autobiographical essay had she not been stunned by the reprimand and threat of damnation contained in the letter to which it was the reply. The year before, impressed by her theological reasoning in conversation, Don Manuel Fernández de Santa Cruz, bishop of Puebla, asked her to record for him her disagreement with a sermon written in 1650 by a famous but controversial Portuguese Jesuit, Antonio Vieyra. Without consulting her, the bishop had the essay printed as the Carta Atenagórica (Athenagoric Letter) (1690).²³ Don Manuel had long been one of Sor Juana’s powerful friends, but he was involved in the internecine ecclesiastical warfare going on at the time. It is not clear whether or not he was innocent and acting alone in having Sor Juana’s essay published. If her profane work had caused a stir (1689), the publication of her religious text caused her ultimate silence.²⁴

Through an ironic twist of fate, her theological refutation came to be used as an “attack” on the liberal wing of the Jesuits and led to the marshaling of forces against Sor Juana that should have been in her favor. At the time of this crisis in her life, Sor Juana’s relationship with members of the vice regal and Church establishment had changed. The vice regents who had befriended and supported her had died or returned to Spain. Further, the reaction set off by the publication of her poems in Spain and of her theological disputation in New Spain estranged her from her nearly life-long confessor, Antonio Nuñez de Miranda.

With the Carta atenagórica, the bishop also published a preliminary letter to Sor Juana, criticizing her dedication to profane subjects, some of the arguments against Vieyra, and expressing worry about her salvation. He signed it with the pseudonym Sor Filotea.

If anything was typical of the seventeenth century it was that almost nothing was taken—or expressed—at face value. Neither life nor letters were approached simply and directly in that Baroque time. It is surprising that so many critics have understood both the letter from Sor Filotea and the answer to it as generous and almost ingenuous. But in view of attitudes about women, it is not surprising.²⁵ Smart women were seen as precocious children (monjita, damita). Women who wrote autobiographies were supposed to be making total confessions. Scholars such as Salceda, Cossio, Castro Leal, and Rivers claim that the ostensible reprimand for not applying her intelligence more to sacred and less to profane subject matter was really a friendly way of presenting Sor Juana with the opportunity of defending herself and of discoursing at length on her favorite subjects. In essence, it seems to have presented her with the need to make what she knew was a vain attempt at self-defense: it spurred her to write her intellectual and spiritual testament. The weight of Counter-Reformation ideology and of the personally devastating criticism she was trying to contest proved an overwhelming condemnation and turned Sor Juana ultimately to seek death and salvation in the manner eternally asked of women—self-sacrifice for the sick and dying. Within three months of receiving Sor Filotea’s letter, she had replied with what she called a simple “narración de mi inclinación” (IV, 445; p. 78) (narrative regarding my inclination to letters), which is a not-so-simple apologia pro vita sua.

A demonstration of her mental virtuosity, a portrait of the origins and development of her intellectual passion and of the suffering it caused her, a defense of the education and intellectual life of women, the Respuesta is also a protest against ecclesiastic—and all kinds of—stupidity and repression.

At one point she was prohibited from reading, a prohibition which she treats with light and condescending humor:

Una prelada muy santa y muy cándida que creyó que el estudio era cosa de Inquisición . . . me mandó que no estudiase. Yo la obedecí (unos tres meses que duró el poder ella mandar) en cuanto a no tomar libro, que en cuanto a no estudiar absolutamente, como no cae debajo de mi potestad, no lo pude hacer, porque aunque no estudiaba en los libros, estudiaba en todas las cosas que Dios crió, sirviéndome ellas de letras, y de libro toda esta máquina universal.

(IV, 458; p. 90)

A religious but simple-minded mother superior who thought that study was a matter for the Inquisition . . . ordered me not to study. I obeyed her (for the three months that she lasted in office) as far as not taking a book in hand. But as far as absolutely not studying, it wasn’t in my power, I couldn’t do it. For even though I wasn’t studying in books, I studied in God’s works, taking them as letters and the whole Creation as my book.

More is here than meets the eye. By ridiculing the “simple-minded” from a lofty position, Sor Juana is urging her reader to abjure the common attitudes and practices of the times. Would even a mother superior make such a prohibition without consulting her confessor? Was she the only one who thought that study was a matter for the Inquisition? Behind the prohibition stood surely confessor and other Church authorities who were gradually restricting her freedom.

The “Respuesta”’s full beauty and meaning become apparent only after more than one reading. It is full of Latin quotations (in most editions they are translated in footnotes). There is tight scholastic logic, classical aphorism, Renaissance harmonic play, and in a few instances familiar and popular expressions. Anger, defiance, challenge, humility, tenderness, and despair alternate as Sor Juana describes her childhood struggles to educate herself. As she affirms her love of study above all else, she defends the right of women to learn and to exercise the freedom to think and reflect and opine. She defends her right to refute the theological arguments of the famous Jesuit and to put forth her own. And she even speaks belligerently:

¿Llevar una opinión contraria de Vieyra fue en mi atrevimiento? . . . Mi entendimiento tal cual ¿no es tan libre como el suyo, pues viene de un solar?

(IV, 468; p. 101)

It was bold of me to oppose Vieyra? . . . My mind is not as free as his, though it derives from the same Source?

Time and again she refers to the inalienable freedom of the mind.

The most important source of support for her defense was one she herself had marshaled to her side in the course of a lifetime of reading: a long line of “tantas y tan insignes mujeres” (IV, 460-61; p. 93) (learned and powerful women of the past). For she buttresses her self-defense with more than forty-two examples of her female predecessors—names drawn from classical, mythological, biblical, and contemporary sources.²⁶ This company assured her that, despite the odds, she had a right to move in the world as she did, to follow her own bent.

The “Respuesta” itself is too rich and complex to be discussed in full here. But the essence of Sor Juana’s convictions is present in the Latin quotations she employed in the essay. I have abstracted and examined seventy-eight such citations. Some must have occurred to her as she wrote; others she must have searched for in her effort to build her defense, which is also a challenge and a veiled announcement of her ultimate resolution. Seen thus, isolated, the quotations offer a sharp-focused and intensified version of the essay as a whole. They are not, as some critics have claimed, superfluous. The first quotation refers to the effect of beneficio (“favor”), “Minorem spei [sic], maiorem benefacti [sic] gloriam pereunt [sic]” (IV,646; p.73)²⁷ (Hopes produce less, favors produce more glory). The sentence immediately following is “In such a way that they silence the favored.” By the last citation of the essay, she has come full circle back to the same concept. The implication is clear: she has been betrayed. The “favor” was the publication—with the flattering title (Athenagoric)—of ideas that she had expressed orally and in private and then upon request had written down, for private consumption only. Of those quotations she selects, both the first, from Quintilian, and the last, from Seneca, match the reference to the classically titled publication.

As is common in the work of the other great Baroque masters, there are frequently double edges and multiple meanings in the allusions, citations, and metaphors she employs. The first citation shows Sor Juana’s understanding of her own and women’s (let that stand for human) psychology. Real support does often give better results than promises. But in this case, of course, the support was a cruelty and an outrage. Lest the intent of the quotation be obscured by the most obvious meaning, she repeats it in the final statement—a bitter, regretful statement of her fate: “Turpe estbeneficiis vinci” (IV, 663; p. 107) (What a humiliation [shame] to be vanquished by favors).

Other citations refer to justice, judgment, trials, accusations, and secrecy. They build her case and reveal her awareness that not only is Sor Filotea a disguise for her friend the bishop of Puebla but that behind him stand her confessor and other less friendly and more powerful forces. Both friends and enemies are defeating her, the first more painfully than the second.

It is notable that the quotation “mulieres in Ecclesia taceant” (Women are to be silent in church) is repeated three times. “Mulier in silentio discat” (Women are to learn in silence) and the universalizing “ Audi, Israel, et tace” (Listen, Israel, and be silent) appear after the first two repetitions and before the third, adding impact to the theme (IV, 656, 660; pp. 94, 98, 100). It also associates the silencing of women—and of herself—with that of the wise, the innocent, the dominated.

The subtlety of Sor Juana’s reasoning is evidenced throughout. For instance, in the citation of Martial on the very subject of understanding (closely related, through Gracián, whose writing she knew well, to ingenuity): “Rare is the one who will recognize the superior understanding of another.“ She has been discussing envy as a motivation for enmity and destruction, and the citation has a triple meaning in the context in which it is placed. On the first plane, it is a dismayed protest at the envy aroused by her intellectual superiority. On a second plane, it relates to her vying against her own human limitations—like Icarus and Phaëthon in whom she projected herself in her great poem, “Primero sueño” —for cosmic understanding. On a third and less apparent plane I detect an association with her own less glorious personal struggles with the emotion of envy.

The misogynistic, anti-intellectual,²⁸ “ turgid atmosphere of uneasy orthodoxy,”²⁹ of New Spain is exemplified both affectively and symbolically through the citations. Misunderstanding of the Scriptures and of the interpretations of the Scriptures are highlighted. Not lack of faith but envy and stupidity are most to blame. It is Sor Juana’s conviction that the road to God is paved by the process of learning and that women of rights must also travel that road. Beauty, understanding, and tireless effort to gain knowledge are what is truly holy; the holy is persecuted. Throughout the citations, a vivid sense of resentment, expressed with irony and bitterness, culminates in the final, disconsolate submission. In the Latin references she explains, defends, and clarifies: her disagreement with Vieyra was not an attack on him, nor on the Jesuits. She cites both according to what she might think her judges want to hear and to what she wants and needs to say.

Four of the citations refer to versifying, and they are presented with a tone of overt impatience with those who consider verse making sinful. From Cassiodorus she takes the statement that verse had its origin in the Holy Scriptures. From Ovid she draws a statement to support her tendency to say everything in verse, and, going further, she reminds the reader that Saint Paul associated verse with being itself.

Five Latin quotations are given in addition to the three already mentioned to substantiate women’s right to learn and teach. From Quintilian, a citation that seems to espouse the cornerstone of modern philosophies of education—intellectual freedom and education through knowledge of the self: “Noscat quisque, et non tantum ex alienis praeceptis sed ex natura sua capiat consilium” (IV, 661; p. 101) (Let all learn and not from the precepts of others but rather from the teachings of their own nature). Having followed this advice, she claims herself formally unprepared to do even what is allowed to women in Church tradition—to teach by writing. By publishing what she wrote, the bishop had transformed it into what she had not intended it to be.

The need for guidance and independence but also the fear and sorrow attendant upon the acquisition of knowledge/understanding are the themes of citations that build toward a parallel with the greatest sufferer—Christ. The citations convey her sense of martyrdom to the cause. From Saint Jerome comes the description of the road toward knowledge as a Calvary (see p. 174). Another citation, from Saint Cyprian, hints at the dangers of writing, while ostensibly continuing the explanation of the dearth of religious subject matter in her works: “Gravi consideratione indigent quae scribimus” (IV, 660; p. 101) (That which we write requires careful [serious] consideration). Great consideration is being given to this “Respuesta.”

Sor Juana fulfilled her purposes magnificently in this essay-letter: she excuses and explains her dedication to secular rather than religious letters. But she did much more. A superficially most ladylike defense exposes its author as a superb ironist. Claiming lack of adequate preparation, she displays her theological erudition; insisting on how little she knows, she shows how much less those who consider themselves sages know; apologizing for digressions, she creates cadenzas of wit; overly courteous, she unleashes her anger. The Respuesta can be and has been read also as a treatise on interdisciplinary study, a discussion of educational theory, a dissection of a society in which the excellent and the extraordinary were not only discouraged but not even tolerated. And yet in three hundred years we have not come so far. That no other Sor Juana has surfaced in the Hispanic literary world is surely in great part a result of the social circumstances that have kept women in “their place.”

In spite of the fact that she was famous and her work well known, until quite recently the study of Sor Juana has been with few exceptions both limited and distorted³⁰. Attitudes about morality, religion, and sexuality have charged Sor Juana criticism with bias and tendentiousness and have led to curious literary battles. Some critics have wanted to see her as a mystic, others as an atheist; some as a jilted or fallen woman, others as a tortured lesbian. For example, Ermilo Abreu Gómez calls Sor Juana’s a viriloid nature;³¹ Ezequiel Chávez describes her as a bird of paradise;³² to Elias Rivers she is a “damita intelectual” (an intellectual little lady), a “monjita” (little nun), and “una ave tan rara” (such a strange bird).³³ Castro Leal calls her “un milagro” (a miracle) and “un ornamento de su siglo” (an ornament to her century)³⁴ and claims that her desire for knowledge did not detract from her femininity and charm. Pedro Salinas, affirming how advanced Sor Juana was for her time, envisions her as an American college girl riding a bike, wearing glasses, her hair blowing in the wind.³⁵ Américo Castro, pointing out her intellectual martyrdom, on the one hand, calls her “pobre monjita” (poor little nun), on the other.³⁶ (No one ever called Fray Luis de León or San Juan de la Cruz “poor little monk.”) Sexist criteria continually obtrude in books and articles that otherwise contain much of value on Sor Juana’s times, her life, and her work. Irving Leonard calls her “an ambivalent personality of feminine emotion and masculine intellectuality.”³⁷ Pfandl, basing his Freudian analysis of her as a “classic psychoneurotic” on her urge to enjoy masculine intellectual pleasure, goes even further: “Her tragedy was this: that although she was born a woman, she should not have been.”³⁸ These and similar labels and opinions, passed on from one critic to another and from critic to student or reader, have too long gone unquestioned.

Modification of sexist criteria can come only after the explosion of erroneous assumptions through intelligent and unrelenting insistence. Women in the field are going back to reckon with a giant who has so often been presented to us through the lens of diminution or condescension or deification. Those in other literatures, it is to be hoped, will soon include Sor Juana’s work in seventeenth-century studies. The “Respuesta a Sor Filotea” deserves to take its place in the canon of basic feminist writings alongside the works of Christine de Pisan,³⁹ Flora Tristan,⁴⁰ Mary Wollstonecraft, ⁴¹ John Stuart Mill,⁴² Virginia Woolf,⁴³ and Simone de Beauvoir.⁴⁴

I have described some of the contrasts between Madre Isabel and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Both women can be tied to earlier periods—the one to medieval mysticism, the other to the medieval abbesses of the Double Abbeys (those in the system of unified monasteries and convents), renowned for development and conservation of learning and the arts. If we can project them backward and place them in an earlier historical period, we can also project them forward and see them in relation to trends of more modern times. Madre Isabel might then remind us of the continuing relegation of women to beatitude and non-schooled culture, still the lot of millions of Hispanic women; Sor Juana is closer to the developments we associate with the age of Enlightenment (rational thinking, scientific inquiry, and experimentation), to the continuing increase in the numbers of women who participate in fields long the domain of men, and to the spreading movement of women’s liberation.

Notes

1. See, for example, E. A. Peers, Studies of the Spanish Mystics, 3 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1927-1930); H. Hatzfeld, Estudios literarios sobre mística española, 2nd ed. (Madrid: Gredos, 1965); D. Alonso, Del siglo de oro a este siglo de siglas (Madrid: Gredos, 1962).

2. The most important single reference source to works by women is Manuel Serrano y Sanz’s Apuntes para una biblioteca de escritoras españolas desde el año 1401 al 1833 (Madrid: Tipografía de la Revista de Archivos, 1903 and 1905; published in a facsimile edition in Madrid, 1975). I can mention two, Sor María de San José, a favorite of Saint Teresa’s, and Juliana Morell, whose work I have traced to the Bibliothèque Calvet in Avignon. See Serrano y Sanz, II, 333-50 and 63-70 (incorrectly indexed). For the most part, however, works of this sort have been ignored. I traveled to Spain on a CUNY Faculty Grant in 1973 to do research at the Biblioteca Nacional and the Archivo Histórico Nacional, where documents by women, largely neglected, are plentiful. It was in the manuscript section of the Biblioteca Nacional that I discovered the life of Madre Isabel, catalogued under the author’s first name, which is the only way such works are listed in that library. (At the Archivo Histórico Nacional they are listed by religious orders only.) Elsewhere in Spain, the archives of Simancas near Valladolid and of the convent of Las Huelgas in Burgos are also rich sources of manuscripts. Archives, convents, and libraries in many other cities—Seville, Avila, Barcelona—have more of such documents. But in many of these places, getting access to the manuscripts requires a great deal of perseverance.

3. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Obras completas (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica 1951-1957), Alfonso Méndez Plancarte, ed., vols. 1-3, Alberto Salceda, ed., vol. 4 (hereafter cited as O.C.). When citing the Respuesta a Sor Filotea (hereafter cited as Respuesta), I also provide page numbers from Elias L. Rivers’ edition, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Antología (Madrid: Anaya, 1965); I cite from this edition because it is readily available and reasonably priced.

4. These lives are mentioned, for example, in R. Trevor Davies’ The Golden Century of Spain (1501-1621) (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1961), p. 290; and Julio Caro Baroja, Las formas complejas de la vida religiosa (Madrid: Akal, 1978), pp. 81, 84, 87. See also Antonio Domíngues Ortíz, Las clases privilegiadas en la España del Antiguo Régimen (Madrid: Ediciones Istmo, 1973), p. 202.

5. Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own (1929; rpt. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1957). Although Woolf’s book is not directly related to the subject of this essay, it is essential reading for anyone interested in women writers.

6. Emily James Putnam, The Lady: Studies of Certain Significant Phases of Her History (1910; rpt. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), pp. 71, 78.

7. Such epithets were common in the seventeenth century. Applied to Sor Juana, it became part of the title of the first edition of her poems in Spain: Inundación castálida de la única poetisa, musa dézima: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (Madrid: Juan García Infanzón, 1689). The sexist nature of the carry-over into modern times of such epithets is what concerns us here.

8. Nancy K. Miller, “Women’s Autobiography in France: For a Dialectics of Identification,” in Women and Language in Literature and Society, ed. S. Connell-Ginet, R. Borker, and N. Furman (New York: Praeger, 1980), p. 267.

9. Of the relatively widely distributed popular paperback anthologies and presentations for students, Rivers lists 5 women among 45 entries; Xirau, 6 of 34; Veiravé, 1 of 24; Flynn, 3 of 23; and Monterde, 4 of 31. In Dorothy Schons’s 1925 bibliography there are among “Articles and Studies” two that are anonymous, which must always be suspected, one with initials only, and 4 women’s names out of 55. Pfandl (for 1873-1935) lists 3 women out of 35, and de la Maza (for 1936-1963) lists 31 of 213 (plus 3 that are doubtful). Anita Arroyo’s bibliography of 179 entries contains 36 by women, 7 or so doubtful, and 2 anonymous. Of the authors participating in homages to Sor Juana, the one published in Mexico in 1951 presented no women critics among eleven authors; the one published in Colombia represented none among four.

10. Serrano y Sanz, Apuntes, I, 289-97.

11. Dorothy Schons’s results are published as Some Bibliographical Notes on Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (Austin: University of Texas Bulletin no. 2526, 1925); and “Some Obscure Points in the Life of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz,” Modern Philology, 24(2) (November 1926): 141-62. The work of Lota Spell and E. J. Gates is cited in Rivers, Antología (Madrid: Anaya, 1965), pp. 12, 15. From the review and citations given by Arroyo (Razón y pasión, pp. 163-66), I gather that a significant interpretation of Sor Juana and the Baroque—that Arroyo does not entirely agree with—was made by Jesusa Alfau de Solalinde, “El barroco en la vida de Sor Juana,” Humanidades (Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the University of Mexico) 1 (1943); I have not been able to locate this periodical.

12. Mirta Aguirre, Del encausto a la sangre: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (Havana: Casa de las Américas, 1975); Rachel Phillips, “Sor Juana: Dream and Silence,” Aphra 3(1) (Winter 1971-1972): 30-40.

13. Diego Calleja, “Aprobación del Reverendíssimo Padre Diego Calleja, de la Compañía de Jesús” in Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Fama y obras posthumas del Fénix de México (Madrid: Antonio G. de Reyes, 1714), unpaginated.

14. Dorothy Schons suggests four hundred volumes; see O.C., I, lxi.

15. Dario Puccini, in his heavily footnoted study of Sor Juana, discusses this question and comes to a similar conclusion. See his Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Studio d’una personalitá del Barocco messicano (Roma: Edizioni dell’Ateneo, 1967), pp. 91-96.

16. See Francisco de la Maza, “Sor Juana y Don Carlos: Explicación de dos sonetos hasta ahora confusos,” Cuadernos Americanos 145 (2) (March-April 1966): 190-204.

17. For existing translations of Sor Juana, see: Margery Resnick and Isabelle de Cortivron, eds., Women Writers in Translation: An Annotated Bibliography (New York: Garland Press, 1981).

18. Mirta Aguirre (Del encausto a la sangre), mentioning the fact that Sor Juana had a slave among her servants, places the poems in a nonromanticized focus: “They are not insurrectional poems. . . . Sor Juana is not to be taken as an abolitionist. But slavery hurts her; one feels her sympathy . . .” (p. 84).

19. In Pilar de Oñate, El feminismo en la literatura española (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1935), I found the texts of earlier rather mediocre poems on the same subject. Méndez Plancarte (O.C., I, 488-92) also documented some poetic precursors and subsequent refutations in the notes to the poem.

20. Vicente Gaos, the Mexican philosopher, considers this poem in a class by itself, unequaled in the poetry of intellectual disillusionment; see his “El sueño de un sueño,” Historia de México, 10(37) (July-August 1960): 70-71. Rachel Phillips (“Dream and Silence”), following Octavio Paz and agreeing with his estimation of it as one of the most complex poems in the Spanish language, gives a fine summation and claims that it “bears witness to human dignity” (p. 40). Alfonso Reyes called it, with the Respuesta, the front and back of the same fabric; see his Letras de la Nueva España in his Obras completas, vol. 12 (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1960), p. 371; English translation by Harriet de Onís in Alfonso Reyes, The Position of America (New York: Knopf, 1950), p. 126.

21. Pfandl, La décima musa de México, pp. 188-89.

22. Puccini (Studio d’una personalitá) calls Sor Juana’s feminism premature (p. 148). Salceda calls it “the Magna Carta of intellectual freedom of the women of America” (O.C., IV, xliii). Arroyo (Razón y pasión) calls it the “first manifesto of women’s spiritual liberation” (p. 126). Octavio Paz claims it is “one of the most important documents in the history of Spanish culture and in that of the intellectual emancipation of women,” in Anthology of Mexican Poetry, trans. Samuel Beckett, compiled by O. Paz, preface C. M. Bowra (London: Thames & Hudson, 1958), p. 204.

23. The Athenagoric Letter (or Letter Worthy of Athena), then, was her refutation of Vieyra’s “Maundy Thursday Sermon.” (It was subsequently printed as Crisis sobre un sermón; see O.C., IV, 631-32). One of his main theses is that God does human beings the great favor of putting the need to love one another above the need to love Him. In her refutation, Sor Juana’s primary claim is that the greatest proof of God’s favor is to go against His own nature, to refrain from doing us good, in order that we may learn. Although there is not the space here to discuss the subject further, it may interest readers in comparative literature and women’s studies to know that the concept of God as a cause of pain (as well as of pleasure) and of the usefulness for learning of passing through pain and suffering was affirmed in a letter of 1693, written by the first English feminist, Mary Astell (1666-1731). It will be reprinted in a forthcoming book by the woman who has rediscovered her, Ruth Perry, of M.I.T. Letters between John Norris and Mary Astell were published in London in 1695.

24. See Puccini, Studio d’una personalitá, pp. 34-49; Arroyo, Razón y pasión, Part 1, Chap. 3; Aguirre, Del encausto a la sangre, pp. 42-50.

25. See Margaret Adams, “The Compassion Trip,” and other essays in Woman in Sexist Society: Studies in Power and Powerlessness, ed. Vivian Gornick and Barbara K. Moran (New York: Basic Books, 1971); Elise Boulding, The Underside of History: A View of Women Through Time (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1976); Becoming Visible: Women in European History, ed. Renate Bridenthal and Claudia Koonz (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1977).

26. Some of the learned and powerful women she mentions are the mother of John the Baptist, Saint Paula, Saint Teresa, Deborah, the Queen of Sheba, Abigail, Esther, Rahab, Anna, the Sibyls, Minerva, Argentaria, Tiresias, Zenobia, Arete, Nicostrata, Aspasia Milesia, Hispasia, Leoncia, Jucia, Corina, Cornelia, Catherine, Gertrude, Paula Blesila, Eustoquio, Fabiola, Falconia, Queen Isabel, Christine Alexandra, the Duchess of Aveyro, the Countess of Villaumbrosa, Marcela, Pacatula, Leta, Bridgette, Salome, Mary the mother of Jacob, Sister Mary of Antigua, and Mary of Agreda. O.C., IV, 460 et passim; Rivers ed., p. 93.

27. Medievalist Barbara Grant and Latin scholar Ellen Quackenbos have pointed out to me three errors in the citation: (1) spei should read spes; (2) benefacti should read benefacta; and (3) pereunt should read pariunt. I have checked the 1700, 1714, and 1725 editions. The errors appear in all three and were, therefore, probably either errors of Sor Juana’s or misreadings by the Spanish printers of the original ms. They passed uncorrected into the O.C.

28. See Manuel Durán, “El drama intelectual de Sor Juana y el anti-intelectualismo hispánico,” Cuadernos Americanos, 21(4) (July-August 1963): 238-53.

29. Phillips, “Dream and Silence,” p. 30.

30. I do not wish to suggest that Sor Juana scholarship is lacking in value. I do, however, wish to point up and underline the limiting and distorting effects of sexist attitudes—which are both conscious and unconscious—inherent in the scholarship to which we are accustomed. See Feminist Literary Criticism: Explorations in Theory, ed. Josephine Donovan (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1975). Octavio Paz, for instance, in a recently published article entitled “Juana Ramírez,” Vuelta (Mexico), 2 (April 1978): 17-23, quotes, as lamentably still true, Dorothy Schons’s comment, made in 1926: “Sor Juana’s biography has yet to be written.” He sets the record straight for a large reading public on the date of her birth, 1648, as established by Guillermo Ramírez España and Alberto G. Salceda, rather than 1651 as claimed by Calleja at the beginning of the eighteenth century and repeated in most subsequent studies. He reviews the history of her family and discusses the “illegitimacy” of Juana Ramírez, of her siblings, and of other relatives. But in summarizing and noting the virtues and failures of Pfandl’s Freudian study of the poet, he seems to accept Freudian tenets himself without question. He points out that J. R. had to have become “masculinized” in order to accede to knowledge in a “masculine culture.” A feminist examination of the question of intellect in a patriarchal culture would have a different focus. For example, why the label “masculine” for all outstanding intellectual products by women?

31. Ermilo Abreu Gómez, Semblanza de sor Juana (Mexico: Ediciones Letras de México, 1938), p. 41.

32. Ezequiel Chávez, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Ensayo de psicología y de estimación del sentido de su obra (Mexico: Editorial Porrúa, 1970), p. 36.

33. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Antología, ed. Elias L. Rivers (Madrid: Anaya, 1965), p. 6.

34. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Poesía, Teatro y Prosa, ed. Antonio Castro Leal (Mexico: Editorial Porrúa, 1968), p. vii.

35. “En busca de Juana de Asbaje,” in Pedro Salinas, Ensayos de literatura hispánica (Madrid: Aguilar, 1958), p. 124.

36. Américo Castro, De la edad conflictiva, 2nd ed. (Madrid: Taurus, 1961), pp. 155, 157.

37. Irving Leonard, “The encontradas correspondencias of Sor Juana Inés: An Interpretation,” Hispanic Review, 23 (January 1955): 33; this phrase is quoted in Gerard Flynn, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (New York: Twayne, 1971), p. 119.

38. Pfandl, La décima musa de México, p. 311; this is the passage selected for quotation in Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Selección poética, ed. Alfredo Veravé (Buenos Aires: Kapelusz, 1972), p. 162.

39. Christine de Pisan was a fifteenth-century French poet who wrote a treatise on women’s education, protested against Ovid’s Ars Amatoria, and participated in a controversy regarding Le Roman de la Rose. She was celebrated and attacked as a champion of her sex. See Eileen Power, Medieval Women, ed. M. M. Postan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), pp. 12-13, 31-34, et passim; for bibliographic references, see note 2, p. 100.

40. Flora Tristan, a utopian socialist, best known as the grandmother of Gauguin, and a precursor of Marx, wrote in defense of the English and French working class, especially of the women of that class, in the third and fourth decades of the nineteenth century. See Dominique Desanti, ed., Oeuvres et vie mêlées [par] Flora Tristan (Paris: Union Générale d’Editions, 1973).

41. See Mary Wollstonecraft, “A Vindication of the Rights of Women,” in Feminism: The Essential Historical Writings, ed. Miriam Schneir (1798; rpt. New York: Vintage, 1972).

42.See John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women (1869; rpt. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1970).

43. See Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own (1929; rpt. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1957).

44. See Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (French 1949; English 1955; rpt. New York: Bantam, 1970).

JUANA INÉS DE LA CRUZ (ESSAY DATE 1692)

SOURCE: Cruz, Juana Inés de la. The Answer=La respuesta, edited by Electa Arenal and Amanda Powell, pp. 77-87. New York: The Feminist Press, 1994.

In the following excerpt from her "Respuesta a Sor Filotea de la Cruz," written in 1692, Sor Juana argues for the importance of education for women. She cites several precedents for scholarly and wise women, then addresses the common claim that in his letters St. Paul forbade women to teach.

If studies, my Lady, be merits (for indeed I see them extolled as such in men), in me they are no such thing: I study because I must. If they be a failing, I believe for the same reason that the fault is none of mine. Yet withal, I live always so wary of myself that neither in this nor in anything else do I trust my own judgment. And so I entrust the decision to your supreme skill and straightway submit to whatever sentence you may pass, posing no objection or reluctance, for this has been no more than a simple account of my inclination to letters.

I confess also that, while in truth this inclination has been such that, as I said before, I had no need of exemplars, nevertheless the many books that I have read have not failed to help me, both in sacred as well as secular letters. For there I see a Deborah issuing laws, military as well as political, and governing the people among whom there were so many learned men. I see the exceedingly knowledgeable Queen of Sheba, so learned she dares to test the wisdom of the wisest of all wise men with riddles, without being rebuked for it; indeed, on this very account she is to become judge of the unbelievers. I see so many and such significant women: some adorned with the gift of prophecy, like an Abigail; others, of persuasion, like Esther; others, of piety, like Rahab; others, of perseverance, like Anna [Hannah] the mother of Samuel; and others, infinitely more, with other kinds of qualities and virtues.

If I consider the Gentiles, the first I meet are the Sibyls, chosen by God to prophesy the essential mysteries of our Faith in such learned and elegant verses that they stupefy the imagination. I see a woman such as Minerva, daughter of great Jupiter and mistress of all the wisdom of Athens, adored as goddess of the sciences. I see one Polla Argentaria, who helped Lucan, her husband, to write the Battle of Pharsalia. I see the daughter of the divine Tiresias, more learned still than her father. I see, too, such a woman as Zenobia, queen of the Palmyrians, as wise as she was courageous. Again, I see an Arete, daughter of Aristippus, most learned. A Nicostrata, inventor of Latin letters and most erudite in the Greek. An Aspasia Miletia, who taught philosophy and rhetoric and was the teacher of the philosopher Pericles. An Hypatia, who taught astrology and lectured for many years in Alexandria. A Leontium, who won over the philosopher Theophrastus and proved him wrong. A Julia, a Corinna, a Cornelia; and, in sum, the vast throng of women who merited titles and earned renown: now as Greeks, again as Muses, and yet again as Pythonesses. For what were they all but learned women, who were considered, celebrated, and indeed venerated as such in Antiquity? Without mentioning still others, of whom the books are full; for I see the Egyptian Catherine, lecturing and refuting all the learning of the most learned men of Egypt. I see a Gertrude read, write, and teach. And seeking no more examples far from home, I see my own most holy mother Paula, learned in the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin tongues and most expert in the interpretation of the Scriptures. What wonder then can it be that, though her chronicler was no less than the unequaled Jerome, the Saint found himself scarcely worthy of the task, for with that lively gravity and energetic effectiveness with which only he can express himself, he says: "If all the parts of my body were tongues, they would not suffice to proclaim the learning and virtues of Paula." Blessilla, a widow, earned the same praises, as did the luminous virgin Eustochium, both of them daughters of the Saint herself [Paula]; and indeed Eustochium was such that for her knowledge she was hailed as a World Prodigy. Fabiola, also a Roman, was another most learned in Holy Scripture. Proba Falconia, a Roman woman, wrote an elegant book of centos, joining together verses from Virgil, on the mysteries of our holy Faith. Our Queen Isabella, wife of Alfonso X, is known to have written on astrology—without mentioning others, whom I omit so as not merely to copy what others have said (which is a vice I have always detested). Well then, in our own day there thrive the great Christina Alexandra, Queen of Sweden, as learned as she is brave and generous; and too those most excellent ladies, the Duchess of Aveyro and the Countess of Villaumbrosa.

The venerable Dr. Arce (worthy professor of Scripture, known for his virtue and learning), in his For the Scholar of the Bible, raises this question: "Is it permissible for women to apply themselves to the study, and indeed the interpretation, of the Holy Bible?" And in opposition he presents the verdicts passed by many saints, particularly the words of [Paul] the Apostle: "Let women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted them to speak," etc. Arce then presents differing verdicts, including this passage addressed to Titus, again spoken by the Apostle: "The aged women, in like manner, in holy attire […] teaching well"; and he gives other interpretations from the Fathers of the Church. Arce at last resolves, in his prudent way, that women are not allowed to lecture publicly in the universities or to preach from the pulpits, but that studying, writing, and teaching privately is not only permitted but most beneficial and useful to them. Clearly, of course, he does not mean by this that all women should do so, but only those whom God may have seen fit to endow with special virtue and prudence, and who are very mature and erudite and possess the necessary talents and requirements for such a sacred occupation. And so just is this distinction that not only women, who are held to be so incompetent, but also men, who simply because they are men think themselves wise, are to be prohibited from the interpretation of the Sacred Word, save when they are most learned, virtuous, of amenable intellect and inclined to the good. For when the reverse is true, I believe, numerous sectarians are produced, and this has given rise to numerous heresies. For there are many who study only to become ignorant, especially those of arrogant, restless, and prideful spirits, fond of innovations in the Law (the very thing that rejects all innovation). And so they are not content until, for the sake of saying what no one before them has said, they speak heresy. Of such men as these the Holy Spirit says: "For wisdom will not enter into a malicious soul." For them, more harm is worked by knowledge than by ignorance. A wit once observed that he who knows no Latin is not an utter fool, but he who does know it has met the prerequisites. And I might add that he is made a perfect fool (if foolishness can attain perfection) by having studied his bit of philosophy and theology and by knowing something of languages. For with that he can be foolish in several sciences and tongues; a great fool cannot be contained in his mother tongue alone.

To such men, I repeat, study does harm, because it is like putting a sword in the hands of a madman: though the sword be the noblest of instruments for defense, in his hands it becomes his own death and that of many others. This is what the Divine Letters became in the hands of that wicked Pelagius and of the perverse Arius, of that wicked Luther, and all the other heretics, like our own Dr. Cazalla (who was never either our own nor a doctor). Learning harmed them all, though it can be the best nourishment and life for the soul. For just as an infirm stomach, suffering from diminished heat, produces more bitter, putrid, and perverse humors the better the food that it is given, so too these evil persons give rise to worse opinions the more they study. Their understanding is obstructed by the very thing that should nourish it, and the fact is they study a great deal and digest very little, failing to measure their efforts to the narrow vessel of their understanding. In this regard the Apostle has said: "For I say, by the grace that is given me, to all that are among you, not to be more wise than it behoveth to be wise, but to be wise unto sobriety, and according as God hath divided to every one the measure of faith." And in truth the Apostle said this not to women but to men, and the "Let [them] keep silence" was meant not only for women, but for all those who are not very competent. If I wish to know as much as or more than Aristotle or St. Augustine, but I lack the ability of a St. Augustine or an Aristotle, then I may study more than both of them together, but I shall not only fail to reach my goal: I shall weaken and stupefy the workings of my feeble understanding with such a disproportionate aim.

Oh, that all men—and I, who am but an ignorant woman, first of all—might take the measure of our abilities before setting out to study and, what is worse, to write, in our jealous aspiration to equal and even surpass others. How little boldness would we summon, how many errors might we avoid, and how many distorted interpretations now noised abroad should be noised no further! And I place my own before all others, for if I knew all that I ought, I would not so much as write these words. Yet I protest that I do so only to obey you; and with such misgiving that you owe me more for taking up my pen with all this fear than you would owe me were I to present you with the most perfect works. But withal, it is well that this goes to meet with your correction: erase it, tear it up, and chastise me, for I shall value that more than all the vain applause others could give me. "The just man shall correct me in mercy, and shall reprove me: but let not the oil of the sinner fatten my head."

And returning to our own Arce, I observe that in support of his views he presents these words of my father St. Jerome (in the letter To Leta, on the Education of Her Daughter), where he says: "[Her] childish tongue must be imbued with the sweet music of the Psalms. […] The very words from which she will get into the way of forming sentences should not be taken at haphazard but be definitely chosen and arranged on purpose. For example, let her have the names of the prophets and the apostles, and the whole list of patriarchs from Adam downwards, as Matthew and Luke give it. She will then be doing two things at the same time, and will remember them afterwards. […] Let her every day repeat to you a portion of the Scriptures as her fixed task." Very well, if the Saint wished a little girl, scarcely beginning to speak, to be instructed thus, what must he desire for his nuns and spiritual daughters? We see this most clearly in the women already mentioned—Eustochium and Fabiola—and also in Marcella, the latter's sister; in Pacatula, and in other women whom the Saint honors in his epistles, urging them on in this holy exercise. This appears in the letter already cited, where I noted the words "let her repeat to you …" which serve to reclaim and confirm St. Paul's description, "teaching well." For the "let her repeat the task to you" of my great Father makes clear that the little girl's teacher must be Leta herself, the girl's mother.

Oh, how many abuses would be avoided in our land if the older women were as well instructed as Leta and knew how to teach as is commanded by St. Paul and my father St. Jerome! Instead, for lack of such learning and through the extreme feebleness in which they are determined to maintain our poor women, if any parents then wish to give their daughters more extensive Christian instruction than is usual, necessity and the lack of learned older women oblige them to employ men as instructors to teach reading and writing, numbers and music, and other skills. This leads to considerable harm, which occurs every day in doleful instances of these unsuitable associations. For the immediacy of such contact and the passage of time all too frequently allow what seemed impossible to be accomplished quite easily. For this reason, many parents prefer to let their daughters remain uncivilized and untutored, rather than risk exposing them to such notorious peril as this familiarity with men. Yet all this could be avoided if there were old women of sound education, as St. Paul desires, so that instruction could be passed from the old to the young just as is done with sewing and all the customary skills.

For what impropriety can there be if an older woman, learned in letters and holy conversation and customs, should have in her charge the education of young maids? Better so than to let these young girls go to perdition, either for lack of any Christian teaching or because one tries to impart it through such dangerous means as male teachers. For if there were no greater risk than the simple indecency of seating a completely unknown man at the side of a bashful woman (who blushes if her own father should look her straight in the face), allowing him to address her with household familiarity and to speak to her with intimate authority, even so the modesty demanded in interchange with men and in conversation with them gives sufficient cause to forbid this. Indeed, I do not see how the custom of men as teachers of women can be without its dangers, save only in the strict tribunal of the confessional, or the distant teachings of the pulpit, or the remote wisdom of books; but never in the repeated handling that occurs in such immediate and tarnishing contact. And everyone knows this to be true. Nevertheless, it is permitted for no better reason than the lack of learned older women; therefore, it does great harm not to have them. This point should be taken into account by those who, tied to the "Let women keep silence in the churches," curse the idea that women should acquire knowledge and teach, as if it were not the Apostle himself who described them "teaching well." Furthermore, that prohibition applied to the case related by Eusebius: to wit, that in the early Church, women were set to teaching each other Christian doctrine in the temples. The murmur of their voices caused confusion when the apostles were preaching, and that is why they were told to be silent. Just so, we see today that when the preacher is preaching, no one prays aloud.

"Respuesta a Sor Filotea de la Cruz"

OCTAVIO PAZ (ESSAY DATE 1982)

SOURCE: Paz, Octavio. “The Response.” In Sor Juana or, The Traps of Faith, translated by Margaret Sayers Peden, pp. 411-24. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1988.
In the following excerpt, Paz examines the mixed messages of Sor Juana’s “Respuesta,” or “Response,” observing that she often contradicts herself when discussing her education, her writing, and her vocation.

Sor Juana and Fernández de Santa Cruz must have foreseen that the publication of the “Carta atenagórica” would provoke replies and commentaries. Their number, however, and the violence of some, must have amazed them both and slightly frightened Sor Juana. Only echoes from this polemic and a few actual documents have survived to our day; nevertheless, from what the “Response” tells us, we know that a number of clerics were involved and that some attacked Sor Juana furiously, despite the fact that she was a woman and a nun. The polemic reached across the sea, although there it lacked the acrimony and heat of the debate in Mexico.¹ From the beginning, through a kind of tacit agreement—there is nothing the Church detests more than scandal— there was an attempt to avoid publicity. This policy continued even after the death of the principal protagonists. In Fame, Castorena y Ursúa refers only in passing to the incident, although we know that he was one of Sor Juana’s defenders; Calleja praises the critique of Vieyra’s sermon in effusive terms but does not go to the heart of the matter; Oviedo is preoccupied with defending Núñez de Miranda and tries to show that Sor Juana did not return his affection; Torres, similarly, exalts and defends the memory of Santa Cruz; as for José de Lezamis, he does not even mention the affair. This silence is an attempt to conceal what actually happened.

Almost none of the commentaries were printed. Some were delivered from the pulpits of churches and in the lecture halls of schools and seminaries. Others circulated in manuscript. Sor Juana relates that her most rabid critic made and distributed copies of his comments. Dorothy Schons speaks of a “storm of criticism” and cites, among the works that circulated in manuscript, one written by a priest, Manuel Serrano de Pereda, and one by a friar, Francisco Ildefonso de Segura. But we need not dwell on this: Sor Juana always refers to her critics in the plural, calling them “impugners,” “slanderers,” and “persecutors.” Among the documents discovered by Ermilo Abreu Gómez was a pamphlet entitled “La fineza mayor” (“The Greatest Act of Love”), a sermon delivered on March 20, 1691, by the Valencian priest Francisco Xavier Palavicino Villarrasa in the convent of San Jerónimo itself. Sor Juana had sent off her “Response to Sor Filotea de la Cruz” barely ten days before. Palavicino’s sermon holds special interest for us: it is an indication of the proportions the affair assumed in the months following the appearance of the “Carta atenagórica.” Palavicino disagrees both with Vieyra’s and Sor Juana’s opinions: in his eyes, Christ’s greatest fineza is to conceal Himself during the sacrament of the Eucharist. He begins his sermon with disproportionate praise of Vieyra: a Portuguese Demosthenes, a Jesuit Cicero, and “the Tertullian of our blessed age.” He continues by praising Sor Juana, although he concludes with the familiar reservation: “The choicest intellect of this blessed century, Minerva of America, great talent limited by the handicap of her being a woman . . .” Probably the nuns of San Jerónimo, with the hope of calming high feelings, had invited the diplomatic Palavicino to intervene. What the Valencian priest wrote was vastly inferior both to Vieyra’s sermon and to Sor Juana’s critique, but at that moment the weight of the reasoning was less important than the personalities of the antagonists. It is revealing that the nuns of San Jerónimo thought it prudent to invite a homilist whose opinion on the finezas of Christ differed from those of Vieyra and Sor Juana, in this way demonstrating their detachment from the controversy. Sor Juana must have considered this a defection on the part of her sisters.

The reactions caused by the “Carta” were not exclusively negative. In spite of the “handicap of her being a woman” there were those who defended her, and in the “Response” she refers to their comments, although without naming the authors. She is particularly effusive in praising one of them, probably Castorena y Ursúa, to whom she also dedicated a poem of gratitude, in which she says gracefully: “you must let the light of your intellect / shine brightly in my defense.” Castorena y Ursúa’s defense, like most of the others, does not appear anywhere—still another indication that there was a concerted attempt to erase all traces of the scandal. This reticence, this silence and ambiguity, along with a fondness for pseudonyms and veiled allusions, is characteristic of all bureaucracies identified with an orthodoxy. This also explains the strangely ambiguous prologue by Sor Filotea de la Cruz. First, the pseudonym. The famed Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, Fernández de Santa Cruz’s predecessor as the Bishop of Puebla, had in 1659 published “Peregrinación de Filotea al Santo templo y monte de la Cruz” (“Pilgrimage of Filotea to the Holy Temple and Hill of the Cross”), written in imitation of Francisco de Sales’ “Filotea francesa” (“French Filotea”). As Filotea means “one who loves God,” even the pseudonym chosen by the Bishop of Puebla was an invitation to leave secular letters and take up sacred subjects. The contrast between the first paragraph of the prologue and what follows is also remarkable. The text begins with extravagant praise of Sor Juana: in addition to Vieyra, she had surpassed another Portuguese preacher, Meneses, who had been Vieyra’s teacher. Not without malice, Sor Filotea expresses amazement that a woman should have vanquished a great theologian. Following that statement, Sor Filotea agrees with the notion that women may study provided that study not make them arrogant. All this can be considered as a series of oblique thrusts against Aguiar. Then the author voices a reservation, one that is essential: what a pity that Sor Juana had devoted herself to secular and not sacred writing.

The Bishop of Puebla has been accused of intolerance. Rightly so, although it seems to me that this cautiously worded text has not been read with care. The paragraphs condemning Sor Juana’s predisposition toward secular writing probably were intended to deflect any criticism that might arise from friends of the Archbishop of Mexico. I also believe that Fernández de Santa Cruz’s reprimand, in addition to its tactical utility as a weapon of self-defense, accurately represented his point of view. Sor Juana’s style of thinking and writing collided violently with his views. He believed that “any science that does not serve Christ is but ignorance and vanity.” Sor Juana paid lip service to those ideas, but the attitude that ruled her life was radically different: her true passion was knowledge. Another source of conflict was the limits imposed on a woman’s learning. Sor Juana wants them broadened, and in this she does not yield. Although her rebellion is undeclared, she does not give in: she advances with prudence, retreats, again advances. I emphasize the Bishop’s ambivalence: he asks Sor Juana to write a critique of Vieyra; he publishes it, and does not hesitate to give it his imprimatur; he hides behind a pseudonym with ambiguous connotations and writes a no less ambiguous prologue in which he praises Sor Juana on the one hand and criticizes her on the other. If Sor Juana’s enemies attack the Bishop, if they are startled that he published such a text, he can reply that he had already reprimanded the nun; at the same time, that reprimand offers her an opportunity to defend herself. José María de Cossío assumes that there was a prior agreement between Sor Juana and the Bishop: the prelate’s letter was an invitation for her to present her case and defend herself. Possibly. But the Bishop could not have known what Sor Juana’s response would be, nor could she have foreseen the prelate’s cruel desertion. At the heart of their relationship there was something equivocal, something unstated; almost as soon as it came to light, the relationship dissolved. The Bishop’s comments brought Sor Juana face to face with the problem of her vocation; that is, with the very meaning of her life. Christ’s finezas and other theological points faded into the background.

Sor Juana was not long in replying; the “Carta atenagórica” appeared at the end of November of 1690, and the “Response to Sor Filotea de la Cruz” was dated March 1, 1691. It is a text written in different modes, ranging from that of a legal brief to autobiography to intellectual discourse. Certain passages—a mark of her time and her religious training—are pedantic and interlarded with Latin; others are simple, written in an admirable and fluid familiar prose. In spite of blemishes and lacunae, the “Response” is a unique document in the history of Hispanic literature, in which there are few confessions relating to the life of the mind, its illusions and disillusions. Reflection on the solitary adventures of the mind is a theme seldom explored by the great Spanish and Spanish American writers. In this, the “Response” departs from the prevailing tendencies of our culture and forms the complement to “First Dream”: if the latter is the isolated monument of the mind in its hunger for learning, the “Response” is the account of the everyday labors of that same mind, told in a direct and familiar language.

The “Response” is more than a kind of prose version of “First Dream”; it is also, and first of all, a reply to the Bishop of Puebla. That reply, naturally, had to be a defense of secular letters. Sor Juana could not say that they were equal or superior to sacred writing—to say that would have led, ipso facto, to the Inquisition—but she used all her ingenuity to praise secular literature and to demonstrate its value and necessity. She was answering not just the Bishop but all her adversaries and critics. She realized that she was being attacked above all for being a woman, and thus her defense was immediately transformed into a defense of the female sex. To us, this is the part of her brief that is most vital and closest to presentday concerns. Finally, there is an invisible inter-locutor with whom Sor Juana is in continual dialogue: herself. All her life she has lived in ambivalence: is she a nun or a writer? As she replies to the Bishop and others, she is writing to herself; she recounts the beginnings of her love of letters, and attempts to explain and justify that love to herself. The contradiction that pervades her life—she says it again and again—is born not of her nature but of circumstances imposed upon her: she was a nun because she had no other choice. But she always fulfilled her religious obligations, and more than twenty years after taking her vows she continued to believe in the compatibility of her two vocations. Any careful reader can perceive on reading those pages that if the “Response” was an examination of conscience, Sor Juana emerged from that examination unrepentant. Further, writing that text was a liberating experience that reconciled her with herself. Although its language is cautious and abounding in reservations and parentheses, the final impression is clear: she is not ashamed of what she is or has been. And this is what must have disturbed, pained, and offended men like Fernández de Santa Cruz and Núñez de Miranda.

Sor Juana begins her response with a long and ingenious preamble. She confesses that she was moved when she saw her “scribblings” published, and adds that “when the letter which you saw fit to call atenagórica reached my hands, in print, I burst into tears of confusion (although tears do not come easily to me).” The words are less than sincere: surely the Bishop would not have published her critique of Vieyra without her assent. Sor Juana prolongs the fiction by not disclosing the identity of the person to whom the “Carta” was addressed; she insists that she wrote it on the order of someone she cannot disobey, and reiterates that she had no hand in its publication. Neither is she sincere when she calls the Bishop’s action a favor from God, who is thus chastising her for her ingratitude. She says she has not written much on theological matters, but the entire “Response” is specifically intended to explicate and justify that omission! The passage ends with a formal promise: she accepts Sor Filotea’s admonition. Although “it comes in the guise of counsel,” it will have for her “the force of a precept,” and she will dedicate herself to the study of the Sacred Books (a promise not fulfilled, as we shall see). After this humble and conciliatory prelude, she takes up her defense.²

Why has she not written more on sacred subjects? The answer is disconcerting: she is not capable of penetrating the subtleties of theology. She invokes the authority of St. Jerome, who recalls that, among the Jews, those dedicated to the priesthood were forbidden to read the Song of Songs “until they have passed thirty years of age . . . in order that the sweetness of those epithalamia not prompt imprudent youth to translate their sentiment into desires of the flesh.” Fear of misinterpreting the Holy Scripture often “has plucked my pen from my hand . . . , a scruple I did not find when it came to secular matters, for a heresy against art is punished not by the Holy Office but by the judicious with derision, and by critics with censure.” The paragraph is ambiguous; it is clear that she did indeed have sufficient talent to deal with theological abstractions but, just as clearly, she preferred writing plays and sonnets. She affirms that she never wrote “except when compelled and constrained, and then only to give pleasure to others”—a surprising declaration if one recalls the effort she put into having her works published. Immediately, however, she modifies that statement: she says that this “repugnance” for writing refers specifically to sacred matters, and repeats, “I wish no quarrel with the Holy Office.” Her true passion has been learning, not literature. The statement must be understood in its true sense: by learning, she means not only the sciences and philosophy but what in her time was called humane letters, with classical literature in the forefront.³

In the paragraphs that follow she defends not only her passionate dedication to literature but her womanhood:

From the moment I was first illuminated by the light of reason, my inclination toward letters has been so vehement that not even the admonitions of others . . . nor my own meditations . . . have been sufficient to cause me to forswear this natural impulse that God placed in me; the Lord God knows why, and for what purpose. And he knows that I have prayed that he dim the light of my reason, leaving only that which is needed to keep his Law, for there are those who say that all else is unwanted in a woman.

The “those” referred to are the ones who according to the Bishop were guilty of ignobly “denying women the exercise of letters.” Then she makes a remarkable confession, although again she blends the true with the false:

I have sought to veil the light of my reason, along with my name, and to offer it up only to Him who bestowed it on me, and He knows that none other was the cause of my entering into religion, not-withstanding that the spiritual exercises and company of a community were repugnant to the freedom and quiet I desired for my studious endeavors.

A glaring contradiction: in the first part of the essay she says that in the convent she had wanted to veil not only her name but the light of her reason, which would have meant, specifically, renouncing her bent toward study; in the second part she says that she took the veil even though she knew that life in the convent would hinder her intention to study and read. Here, for the first time, we see a theme that will appear and reappear throughout the course of the “Response”: the conflict between the vocation of a solitary scholar and the obligations of communal life in a convent.

Sor Juana’s confessions do not entirely correspond to reality: she seems to forget how few roads were open to her in 1669. If not the road of the convent, what would her choice have been? A disastrous marriage, like those of her two sisters? Nonetheless, it is true that she entered San Jerónimo knowing that a convent was not the most propitious place for an intellectual like herself. That is why she had hesitated, and confessed her doubts to “only the one who should know,” that is, her confessor, Núñez de Miranda. But he did not accept her uncertainty, “saying it was temptation: and so it would have been.” A terrible admission that is also a veiled accusation: Núñez de Miranda had told her that it was temptation to want to bury her name and renown, along with her person, in the convent. He had urged her to take the veil, telling her that she could continue her studies without harm to her religious obligations. Surely Sor Juana is speaking the truth. For Núñez de Miranda, the first order of business was to get her into the convent. Later, gradually, he would persuade her to abandon poetry and secular letters and to consecrate herself to the religious life. It is clear that Núñez de Miranda changed during the course of his relationship with Sor Juana: at first he was kind; later, increasingly severe. He was a “fisher of souls,” and in order to catch Sor Juana he minimized the conflict between religious life and dedication to study and letters. That is why, faced with her hesitation, he called it temptation. The Jesuit’s transformation was the slow product of circumstances. During the long period in which Sor Juana was totally involved in literary affairs, Father Antonio did not overtly express his strong opposition; Sor Juana had become something akin to an official poet, linked to the palace by the double ties of commissions from the court and personal friendship. At the end of the paragraph, Sor Juana writes with true passion: “If it were in my power, my lady, to repay you in some part what I owe you, it might be done by telling you this thing which has never before passed my lips, except to be spoken to the one who should hear it [Núñez de Miranda].” These pained words reveal a private disagreement, until then kept secret, between her and her confessor.⁴

In the paragraphs that follow, she tells of her efforts: of having attended at the age of three “a school for girls we call the Amigas” in Nepantla (she lived in Panoayán, several kilometers away); of her voluntary abstention from eating cheese— her favorite treat—because she had heard that it made one “slow of wits”; of her scheme to attend the university dressed as a man; of her readings in her grandfather’s library; of having learned grammar, and the punishment she voluntarily inflicted on herself: cutting her hair four or six fingers’ breadth and not letting it grow back until she had learned some lesson or other. I referred to these passages in Part Two, interpreting them there. A pity that they are so few, and that Sor Juana skimmed so rapidly over her childhood and youth. The account of her love of study leads again to her reason for having chosen the religious life. This is one of the themes that haunted her thoughts. She confesses that she had felt “a total antipathy to marriage,” and that she had deemed life in a convent “the least unsuitable and most honorable I could elect.” Hers is a case not of a call from God but of a rational choice: Sor Juana weighs her situation and with a clear head chooses San Jerónimo, in spite of “all the trivial aspects of my nature, such as wishing to live alone, and wishing to have no obligatory occupation that would inhibit the freedom of my studies, or the sounds of a community that would intrude upon the peaceful silence of my books.” That is why, she repeats, she hesitated in taking her vows until “certain learned persons enlightened me, explaining that [my wishes] were temptation.” Again the theme that she returns to throughout the “Response”: for her, although she was aware of the conflict between intellectual and convent life, entering the convent did not entail renouncing humane letters. This conflict was not one of substance but of regimen: the many obligations of the convent made studious concentration next to impossible. The result, naturally, was that her thirst for knowledge was not sated but, rather, intensified: “I brought with me my worst enemy, my inclination, which I do not know whether to consider a gift or a punishment from Heaven, for once dimmed and encumbered by the many activities common to religion, that inclination exploded in me like gunpowder, proving that privatio est causa appetitus.”⁵

In the convent she continued the pursuit “of reading and more reading, of study and more study.” There is bitterness in her account: it is difficult to study without a master. Although her studies were secular, her ultimate goal was to arrive at theology. This, again, sounds to me less than sincere. She herself confesses that if she dwelled so long on the preliminaries, it was “to flatter and applaud my own inclination, presenting its indulgence as an obligation.” She explains then that one cannot understand “the style of the Queen of Sciences [theology] if one has not first come to know her servants.” Without logic, rhetoric, music, arithmetic, geometry, history, law, languages, astrology, and even the mechanical arts, it is impossible to comprehend passages from Holy Scripture. Sor Juana’s plan, aside from its intrinsic difficulty, was superfluous: the highly speculative nature of theology made unnecessary much of the knowledge she speaks of. With the exception of Albertus Magnus, his disciple St. Thomas, and one or two others, no theologian mastered all the sciences of his time. Besides, Sor Juana was too intelligent to believe what she was saying.

Her confidences continue; she tells us that she foundered in the variety of her studies, “having an inclination not toward any one thing in particular but toward all in general.” Nevertheless, even in these apparently unstructured readings she held to a certain rhythm, moving from study to enjoyment. Sor Juana is severe with herself: “though I have studied many things I know nothing.” This judgment on her method of acquiring knowledge, and its results, could perhaps justify José Marí de Cossí’s opinion that she was a dilettante. Not so; her ideal was many-faceted knowledge. By that I mean that she wanted to be proficient in the themes and sciences central to the culture of her day, in the hope of discerning the links and connections that joined that disparate knowledge into a whole. This was an unattainable ideal in the New Spain of the end of the seventeenth century, although she probably did not know that. She was almost entirely ignorant of the great intellectual revolution that was transforming Europe. In view of that ignorance, her desire becomes even more poignant. Nevertheless, if her information was out-of-date and incomplete—especially in physics and astronomy—her concept of culture was singularly modern. It was the view not of the specialist but of the mind that attempts to discover the hidden links among disciplines. She would undoubtedly have been fascinated by the reasoning of a Lévi-Strauss, who finds hidden analogies between primitive thought and music; she would also have been excited by the ideas of modern linguistics, in which the phonemes and their components fulfill the same functions as elementary particles in physics and blocks of color in cubist painting. In spite of the fact that many of her notions were outdated, the view that modern science—from microbiology to astronomy—has given us of the universe as a vast system of communications would not have surprised her unduly.

After describing her experience with many and diverse disciplines in rather negative terms, in a sudden about-face—a common procedure in her writing—she says the opposite: familiarity with many matters is very advantageous, for “what I have not understood in an author in one branch of knowledge, I may understand in a second in a branch that seems remote from the first . . . And thus it is no apology, nor do I offer it as such, to say that I have studied many subjects, seeing that each augments the other.” She invokes as a primary example “the chain the ancients believed issued from the mouth of Jupiter, from which were suspended all things linked one with another.” Sor Juana attributes the image to Father Kircher. It comes, as we have noted, from Macrobius, who used it to illustrate the idea of the descending progression from the One to the Multiple: “From the Supreme God even to the fish in the depths of the sea there is one tie, binding at every link and never broken. This is the golden chain of Homer which God ordered to hang down from the sky to the Earth.”⁶ In the same paragraph, also as if it were taken from Kircher—“in his learned book De magnete”—she repeats her favorite maxim: God is at once center and circumference.⁷

When she reaches this point, she ponders her labors: not only has she lacked a teacher, she has had no fellow students. This comment reveals that during twenty years in the convent she has found no one interested in the sciences, letters, or arts. Instead, the nuns have hindered her with their incessant interruptions. The busy and empty life of the convent: unexpected visitors in her cell, constant gossip, songs and laughter from adjacent cells, the servants and their quarrels. A small world possessed by a fever for the trivial. But the difficulties of communal life—she calls them “inevitable and accidental obstacles”—were but a small part of the problems she experienced. In addition to her obligations as a nun, and the chatter and busyness of her sisters, she suffered the persecution of men and women who wanted to prevent her from studying and writing. Among them, the worst were

not those who persecuted me with open hate and malice, but those who in loving me and desiring my well-being . . . have mortified and tormented me more than those others: “Such studies are not in conformity with sacred innocence; surely you will be lost; surely you will, by reason of your very perspicacity and acuity, grow heady at such exalted heights.”

Among these pious persecutors was Núñez de Miranda. Sor Juana was also maligned for her “unfortunate facility in making verses, even if they are sacred verses.” This entire passage is written with admirable subtlety. Imperceptibly, she moves from the defense of her hunger for learning to the defense of the art of writing poetry, whether sacred or secular. Thus she asserts, without stating it, her right to read and write on themes that were not religious.⁸

To read is a passive occupation; to write is the opposite of burying one’s name in the obscurity of a nunnery: it is to emerge into public view. Eminence, however, always entails penalties: the rule of this vulgar world “is to abhor one who excels, because he deprives others of regard. And thus it happens, and thus it has always happened.” The Pharisees’ hatred of Christ was born of envy. They killed him “because that is the reward for one who excels.” That is why, too, the ancients adorned the figure of Fame, placed on the highest point of their temples, with iron barbs: “the figure thus elevated cannot avoid being the target of barbs.” Any superiority, “whether in dignity, nobility, riches, beauty, or knowledge, must suffer this punishment, but the eminence that undergoes the most severe attack is that of intelligence . . . for, as Gracián stated so eruditely, ‘a man favored by intelligence is favored by nature.’” Sor Juana then launches into a disquisition on Christ as the victim of envy, although she notes that in her case she has been persecuted not “for my knowledge but merely for my love of learning.” That love brought her “closer to the fire of persecution, to the crucible of torment, and to such straits that they have asked that study be forbidden to me.” Who would “they” have been— Aguiar y Seijas? Núñez de Miranda? On one occasion they succeeded, and an abbess, “very saintly and ingenuous, who believed that study was a matter for the Inquisition . . . , commanded me not to study.” The prohibition lasted three months. This incident illustrates another aspect of Sor Juana’s character, one that separates her from her contemporaries and from Hispanic tradition: love of experimentation. Everyday objects, parallel shadows cast by a headboard, the tracings left on the floor by a spinning top—everything she saw and touched served as an excuse for posing questions and attempting to answer them. The kitchen was also her laboratory: “And what shall I tell you, lady, of the secrets of nature I have discovered while cooking . . . ?” And she asks, “What can we, as women, know if not the philosophies of the kitchen?” On the other hand, “had Aristotle prepared victuals, he would have written more.” All these struggles, sleepless nights, hardships suffered for love of learning, were they merits? In the case of a man they would be, but not in a woman. No matter; she has been true to her inclination, she “cannot but study.” She does not offer a judgment of herself; she leaves that to Sor Filotea.⁹

Although her love of letters was so great that she would not have needed examples to imitate, she always had in mind the names of women who had excelled in human and divine studies. Here begins a long and erudite enumeration embracing famous women of history—poets, philosophers, jurists, and others—from classical antiquity and the Bible to contemporaries such as the Duchess de Aveyro and Queen Christina of Sweden. Among the “learned women” she lists, many belong to pagan times, and to hear the name of some—such as Hypatia, “who taught astrology, and studied many years in Alexandria”—on the lips of a nun is somewhat startling. Hypatia of Alexandria, beautiful and intelligent, virtuous and wise, a Neo-platonic philosopher, was murdered in March of 415 by a band of Christian monks. Sor Juana must have known the circumstances of Hypatia’s death, a martyr not to her professed faith but to philosophy. As when she mentions the wife of Simon Magus, the gnostic Ennoia, her admiration for these illustrious women was stronger than fear of going beyond the limits of orthodoxy. Two rival beliefs were at war within her: Christianity and feminism, her religious faith and her love of philosophy. Frequently, and not without risk, feminism and philosophy triumphed. Remarkable courage.¹⁰

The list of learned women offers her the opportunity to introduce a theme that obsesses her: can women teach and interpret Holy Scripture? It was St. Paul’s opinion that they could not: “Let women keep silence in the churches; for it is not permitted them to speak.” Basing her argument on the ideas of a Mexican theologian, Dr. Arce, on other authorities, and on her own wit, through a long, circuitous dialectic she reaches the conclusion that women may study, interpret, and teach Holy Scripture, with one limitation: they must do so not from the pulpit but in their homes and other private places. She proposes something akin to universal education for women, to be the responsibility of elderly educated women. She argues that women should also be taught the sciences and secular letters. She bases her idea in the reasoning she had expounded at the beginning: direct knowledge of the Scriptures is impossible without the study of history, law, arithmetic, logic, rhetoric, and music. The study of holy books “demands more learning than some believe, who, knowing only grammar . . . cling to that ‘Let women keep silence in the churches.’” She scoffs at the idea, current in her day, that women are intellectually inferior. As stupidity is not confined to women, neither is intelligence an attribute only of men.¹¹

The long passage on women brings her back to her own case. Why do they attack her? She does not teach or write theology. The “Carta atenagórica” ? It was not a crime to write it. If the Church did not forbid it, why should others do so? Vieyra’s opinions are not articles of faith. Furthermore, she writes with passion, “I maintained respect at all times . . . , and I did not touch a thread of the robes of the Society of Jesus.” She complains that one of her critics has been lacking in decorum, and has labeled her letter rash and heretical—“why then does he not denounce it?” But the defense of the “Carta” is only one aspect of her brief; she is even more hurt by attacks on her “oft-chastised gift for making verses.” She has searched for the harm that could result, and has not found it. She quotes the great poets and poetesses of the Bible and Catholic tradition to demonstrate that writing poetry is not at variance with the religious life. If so many holy women have cultivated poetry, why is what she has written evil? She states with assurance that “no verse of mine has been deemed indecent.” (What about the burlesque sonnets and epigrams?) Immediately she falls back on the questionable argument she has repeated throughout the “Response”: “Furthermore, I have never written of my own will, but under the pleas and injunctions of others.” This gives her the excuse to slip in the information that “the only piece I remember having written for my own pleasure was a little trifle they called ‘El sueño’. ” Although we have no reason to believe her literally—she surely must have been pleased with much of what she wrote—we can see why she would single out her spiritual autobiography.¹²

The end of the “Response” is more rambling: she repeats herself and skips about, as if she could not find a way to end. She persists in her statement that she wrote her critique at the request of someone she could not disobey, and that she had never thought it would be published. The blemishes and lacunae in the “Carta” are primarily due to the haste with which it had been composed: several arguments and proofs had been left in her inkwell. She does not venture to remit those “reasonings” directly to Sor Filotea, but “if they should wing your way (and they are of such little weight that they surely will), then you will command what I am to do.” So it seems that Sor Juana sent the Bishop other “reasonings” that amplified and rounded out her critique of Vieyra’s sermon. Fernández de Santa Cruz did not publish them, however, or even so much as mention them. How are we to judge this devious behavior? As for those who impugn her: others have responded for her; she has seen some of these replies and is sending one that is especially learned. Neither Fernández de Santa Cruz nor anyone else left any information concerning the content or the fate of those writings. Sor Juana continues: the attacks do not discourage her, as they are the price she has to pay for public notice: “calumny has often mortified me, but never harmed me.” Having vented her feelings, without much logic, she repeats that she has never published anything of her own will, with the exception of two devotional compositions: “Ejercicios de la Encarnación” (“Exercises for the Incarnation” ) and “Ofrecimientos de los Dolores” (“Offerings for the Dolors” ), two folios that circulated unsigned among the nuns of the city.¹³

Before closing with the customary formulas of respect and gratitude, she makes the Bishop an offer: “If ever I write again, my scribbling will always find its way to the haven of your holy feet and the certainty of your correction.” She is undoubtedly referring to theological writings or compositions; clearly she did not propose to send him poems on secular subjects.¹⁴ Thus she ends this remarkable document. The form of her argument is that of a spiral; every advance is a withdrawal. The apparent complexity of her argument can be reduced to a few points: the conflict between religious life and secular study is not one of substance but of regimen; secular studies have always been, and are, steps toward higher and more difficult sacred subjects; the honest practice of poetry is not reprehensible; she claims for herself, and asks for women in general, the chance to be educated in secular as well as sacred literature and science; finally, none of this seems to her to be contrary to the laws of the Church. The “Response to Sor Filotea de la Cruz” is not only a confession but a defense of her intellectual bent; Manuel Fernández de Santa Cruz was seeking a retraction, but Sor Juana’s answer was a refutation.

Notes

1. I stated earlier that an Apologia a favor do R.P. Antonio Vieyra was published in 1727, in Lisbon, signed by an Augustinian nun, Sister Margarita Ignacia. The author of this booklet was actually her brother Luis Gonçalves Pinheiro. Again, pseudonyms and sex changes— unusual symbolic “transvestism.”

2. Lines 1-128. (I refer to the line numbers in volume 4 of the Complete Works.)

3. Lines 129-183.

4. Lines 184-215.

5. Lines 216-289.

6. Macrobius, chapter 14 of his Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, ed. William Harris Stahl. The image comes from the Iliad (VIII, 9). It also appears in Proclus.

7. Lines 290-440. Kircher did not write a book entitled De magnete. Sor Juana may be referring to Magnes, sive de arte magnetica (Rome, 1641), which is Kircher’s most extensive study on magnetism. I previously pointed out the origin of the image of God as a circumference: Nicholas of Cusa. The frontispiece of Magnes contains, among other images, that of the chain descending from the heavens. This symbol appears in two additional books by Kircher: as a frontispiece in Magneticum naturae regnum (Rome, 1667) and in Mundus subterraneus (Amsterdam, 1678).

8. Lines 441-532.

9. Lines 533-844.

10. Between Hypatia and Sor Juana there are clear similarities of which she was undoubtedly aware. Beautiful, young, chaste, and learned, both were persecuted by intolerant prelates, although those who victimized the Alexandrian were incomparably more cruel and barbaric. Hypatia was the daughter and disciple of the Neoplatonic mathematician and philosopher Theon. She was perhaps the first woman to excel in the physical sciences: mathematics and astronomy. She lectured in the Platonic school of Alexandria, which rivaled that of Athens, and wrote several scientific treatises, now lost, commentaries on Diophantus, Apollonius of Perga, and Ptolemy. It is probable that, like all Neoplatonists of her day, she combined astronomy with astrology. She was the teacher and friend of Synesius of Cyrene, Bishop malgré lui and author of a famous book on dream, De insomniis, which Sor Juana might have read, or known indirectly through quotations and commentaries. Hypatia, friend of another pagan, the prefect Orestes, a rival of the awesome patriarch of Alexandria, St. Cyril, a contentious and bloodthirsty theologian, was the target of the animosity of the groups of fanatic, patriarch-led monks who terrorized the city. One day in 415, during the Lenten season, these monks stopped her carriage, killed the coachman, stripped her of her clothes, and raped her. They then took her to the church, where they tore her body to pieces. Gibbon adds a horrible detail: “Her flesh was scraped from her bones with sharp oyster-shells.” Her murder was the beginning of the end of Alexandria’s position as the world center of learning. Her fate inspired the ancients. In one of his letters, Synesius speaks of her as “mother and sister, teacher and benefactress in everything and of everyone.” A century later the poet Palladas dedicated a poem to her memory (Palatine Anthology, IX, 400). In modern times Hypatia has been memorialized by historians, philosophers, and scholars. Gibbon devoted a moving page to her, and the now-forgotten Charles Kingsley made her the heroine of his historical novel Hypatia; or, New foes with an old face (1853). Leconte de Lisle wrote two poems in her honor and, more recently, Charles Péguy delivered an exalted elegy of that soul “si parfaitemente accordée à l’âme platonicienne.” On the subject of her relationship with Synesius, I cite the essay of H. I. Marrou in The Conflict Between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century, ed. Arnoldo Momigliano (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963). As in the case of Sor Juana, all these writers speak of Hypatia’s beauty and love of learning. Gibbon writes with his customary eloquence, “In the bloom of beauty and in the maturity of wisdom, the modest maid refused her lovers and instructed her disciples.” She probably died a virgin, for in the poem Palladas dedicated to her, he sees her as one of the stars in the constellation of Virgo.

11. Lines 841-1150.

12. Lines 1150-1267.

13. They are interesting neither as literature nor as examples of ascetic or spiritual writing.

14. Lines 1267-1432.

FURTHER READING

Bibliography

Crossen, John F. “Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz.” In Catholic Women Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical Sourcebook, edited by Mary R. Reichardt, pp. 181-86. New York: Green-wood Press, 2001.

Focuses on works emphasizing Sor Juana’s theology.

Biography

Paz, Octavio. Sor Juana or, The Traps of Faith, translated by Margaret Sayers Peden. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1988, 547 p.

Examines Sor Juana’s life and works in their cultural context.

Criticism

Arteaga, Alfred. “Tricks of Gender Xing.” Stanford Humanities Review 3, no. 1 (winter 1993): 112-29.

Traces subversive elements in Sor Juana’s writing style.

Feder, Elena. “Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz; or, The Snares of (Con) (tra) di (c) tion.” In Amerindian Images and the Legacy of Columbus, edited by Rene Jara and Nicholas Spadaccini, pp. 473-529. Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press, 1992.

Offers a gender-historical focus on Sor Juana”s major works.

Flynn, Gerard. Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1971, 123 p.

Surveys Sor Juana’s major works, with a brief biography and a discussion of her philosophy; the first book-length treatment of Sor Juana in English.

Friedman, Edward H. “Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s Los em-peños de una casa: Sign as Woman.” Romance Notes 31,no. 3 (spring 1991): 197-203.

Studies Sor Juana’s secular play The Determinations of a Noble House as a revision of Spanish playwright Calederon’s Los empeños de una casa.

Graves, Robert. “Juana de Asbaje.” In The Crowning Privilege:The Clark Lectures 1954-1955, pp. 166-75. London: Cassell & Company, 1955.

Presents Sor Juana in the tradition of a “desperate sisterhood” fated by their intelligence and beauty to a life of loneliness.

Henriquez-Urena, Pedro. “The Flowering of the Colonial World: 1600-1800.“ In Literary Currents in Hispanic America, pp. 58-93. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1946.

Presents portions of Sor Juana’s poems as examples of her personal expression through verse.

Johnson, Julie Greer. “A Comical Lesson in Creativity from Sor Juana.”Hispania 71, no. 2 (May 1988): 442-44.

Traces the ways Sor Juana adapts and employs conven-tional images of women and womanhood in her satirical poetry.

Kirk, Pamela. Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz: Religion, Art, and Feminism. New York: Continuum, 1998, 180 p.

Studies the intersection of religious belief and feminist beliefs in Sor Juana’s work.

Luciani, Frederick. “Octavio Paz on Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz: The Metaphor Incarnate.” Latin American Literary Review 15, no. 30 (July-December 1987): 6-25.

Critiques Paz’s biography of Sor Juana, faulting his tendency to mythologize.

Merriam, Stephanie, ed. Feminist Perspectives on Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991.

Collects essays focusing on women’s issues and feminist criticism as related to Sor Juana’s life and writing.

Pallister, Janis L. “A Note on Sor Juana de la Cruz.” Women and Literature 7, no. 2 (spring 1979): 42-46.

Promotes a critical rediscovery of Sor Juana’s work.

Bibliography

Crossen, John F. "Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz." In Catholic Women Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical Sourcebook, edited by Mary R. Reichardt, pp. 181-86. New York: Green-wood Press, 2001.

Focuses on works emphasizing Sor Juana's theology.

Biography

Paz, Octavio. Sor Juana or, The Traps of Faith, translated by Margaret Sayers Peden. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1988, 547 p.

Examines Sor Juana's life and works in their cultural context.

Criticism

Arteaga, Alfred. "Tricks of Gender Xing." Stanford Humanities Review 3, no. 1 (winter 1993): 112-29.

Traces subversive elements in Sor Juana's writing style.

Feder, Elena. "Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz; or, The Snares of (Con) (tra) di (c) tion." In Amerindian Images and the Legacy of Columbus, edited by Rene Jara and Nicholas Spadaccini, pp. 473-529. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992.

Offers a gender-historical focus on Sor Juana's major works.

Flynn, Gerard. Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1971, 123 p.

Surveys Sor Juana's major works, with a brief biography and a discussion of her philosophy; the first book-length treatment of Sor Juana in English.

Friedman, Edward H. "Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz's Los empeños de una casa: Sign as Woman." Romance Notes 31, no. 3 (spring 1991): 197–203.

Studies Sor Juana's secular play The Determinations of a Noble House as a revision of Spanish playwright Calederon's Los empeños de una casa.

Graves, Robert. "Juana de Asbaje." In The Crowning Privilege: The Clark Lectures 1954-1955, pp. 166-75. London: Cassell & Company, 1955.

Presents Sor Juana in the tradition of a "desperate sisterhood" fated by their intelligence and beauty to a life of loneliness.

Henriquez-Urena, Pedro. "The Flowering of the Colonial World: 1600-1800." In Literary Currents in Hispanic America, pp. 58-93. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1946.

Presents portions of Sor Juana's poems as examples of her personal expression through verse.

Johnson, Julie Greer. "A Comical Lesson in Creativity from Sor Juana." Hispania 71, no. 2 (May 1988): 442-44.

Traces the ways Sor Juana adapts and employs conventional images of women and womanhood in her satirical poetry.

Kirk, Pamela. Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz: Religion, Art, and Feminism. New York: Continuum, 1998, 180 p.

Studies the intersection of religious belief and feminist beliefs in Sor Juana's work.

Luciani, Frederick. "Octavio Paz on Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz: The Metaphor Incarnate." Latin American Literary Review 15, no. 30 (July-December 1987): 6-25.

Critiques Paz's biography of Sor Juana, faulting his tendency to mythologize.

Merriam, Stephanie, ed. Feminist Perspectives on Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991.

Collects essays focusing on women's issues and feminist criticism as related to Sor Juana's life and writing.

Pallister, Janis L. "A Note on Sor Juana de la Cruz." Women and Literature 7, no. 2 (spring 1979): 42-46.

Promotes a critical rediscovery of Sor Juana's work.

Rabin, Lisa. "The Blasón of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz: Politics and Petrarchism in Colonial Mexico." Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 72, no. 1 (January 1995): 28-39.

Discusses the literary and political implications of Sor Juana's use of the blazon in her poetry.

Scott, Nina M. "Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz: 'Let Your Women Keep Silence in the Churches'." Women's Studies International Forum 8, no. 5 (1985): 511-19.

Reviews Response to Sor Filotea de la Cruz as a feminist treatise that reveals Sor Juana's passion for education and women's equality.

Thurman, Judith. "Sister Juana: The Price of Genius." Ms. 1, no. 10 (April 1973): 14-16, 20-21.

Emphasizes the sacrifices made by Sor Juana in order to pursue an intellectual life in the male-centered culture of seventeenth-century New Spain.

Ward, Marilynn I. "The Feminist Crisis of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz." International Journal of Women's Studies 1, no. 5 (September-October 1978): 478-81.

Discusses Sor Juana's life as a tragic instance of sexist repression.

OTHER SOURCES FROM GALE:

Additional coverage of Sor Juana's life and career is contained in the following sources published by the Gale Group: Feminist Writers; Hispanic Literature Criticism Supplement, Ed. 1; Literature Criticism from 1400-1800, Vol. 5; Poetry Criticism, Vol. 24; Reference Guide to World Literature, Eds. 2, 3; and World Literature and Its Times, Vol. 1.