Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

Lino portrait by Carine

Sor Juana Inéz de la Cruz was a Mexican self-taught scholar, poet, playwright, philosopher and nun. A true interdisciplinary. Writing during the Spanish ‘Golden Age’, the time of the Baroque and enlightenment, she is often seen as a proto-feminist, advocating education for women and calling men out on their double standards. She was a remarkable and prolific writer during an age when women were supposed to be submissive and intellectually silent, especially in the Americas.

Let me start off with a proclaimer. The few main sources we have of Juana Inés’s life mainly come from herself or her admirers, who would have used it as PR, which have then been interpreted many different ways, often not favourably. So please, add a grain of salt.

Juanes was born in 17th century New Spain, in what is now known as Mexico, roughly a century after colonisation. As a part of the Spanish empire, it was ruled by a Viceroy and society kept to a Spanish structure. Yet the people living in it were diverse: the Mēxihcah (Aztecs), people brought over from the African continent, traders from the Philippines or China, and the European colonisers. Though a Spanish colony, the area was starting to shape its own identity – and Sor Juana Inéz de la Cruz would be part of that.

Like men, do women not have a rational soul? Why then shall they not enjoy the privilege of the enlightenment of letters? Is a woman’s soul not as receptive to God’s grace and glory as a man’s? Then why is she not able to receive learning and knowledge, which are lesser gifts?

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, from ‘A Spiritual Self Defense’, 1681.

Juana was the illegitimate daughter of a Spanish father and a creole mother (born in Mexico, Spanish heritage). Juana grew up on her maternal grandfather’s estate where, with the family not particularly well off, Juana got little to no formal education. Instead, she taught herself, reading all the books in her grandfather’s library. She read widely, from poetry to philosophy to biographies.

By the time Juana was a teenager she was already extremely knowledgeable. Her intellect piqued the Viceroy’s interest and she was ‘presented’ at court, where she became famed for her wit and knowledge. In fact, a panel with 40 wise and religious scholars of the court was put together to subject Juana to extensive questioning. After several hours they stepped out and proclaimed she was the real thing, a truly clever exception to her gender. For a few years Juana was a lady-in-waiting at the court, the Vicereine’s favourite even. This was controversial, especially to the noble ladies-in-waiting: Juana was not there based on her birth, but her own merit.

In 1667, based on her “total disinclination to marriage” and her wish “to have no fixed occupation which might curtail [her] freedom to study”, she joined a convent. It was not uncommon for women of the time to seek a certain type of freedom inside the walls of a nunnery. Marriage brought a whole set of responsibilities and expectations that, if she did not want those, a woman could escape by joining the church. For Juana it meant freedom to continue learning.

The first convent she entered was likely too restrictive for her, so she left. A year or two later she entered a Hieronymite convent, where she chose the name we now know her by (and ‘sor’ actually means ‘sister’). She served as the convent’s archivist and accountant whilst also finding time to read and write. Her cell was large enough to hold a large collection of books, musical instruments and a servant. Her library is said to have held 4000 books, potentially the largest in the colony. But by no means was this a quiet en secluded life. It was common for people to visit nuns, with Juana often reading poetry or playing instruments for visitors. She also kept up correspondences with people at court and in her letters she actually complains that her sisters come and knock on her door too often. All in all, it’s impressive she found the time to write at all.

Juana on the 200 Mexican pesos note

When a new Viceroy arrived, Juana was asked to write a poem for the welcoming festivities. In it, she gently slips in the point that male power depends on female wisdom, showing she was unafraid to share her true thoughts to those in power. Juana became close friends with the new Viceroy’s wife, Marie-Louise. Though much has been written about their relationship, we simply cannot know the nature of their private relationship. It is clear from the poetry that Juana wrote for Marie-Louise, however, that her love went beyond regular courtly praise.  

Juana was a prolific writer, said to be the most published poet of the Spanish Empire during her time. Witty and inventive, her work included poetry, letters and a dozen plays, touching on morality, romance, religion and satire. It has to said, though, that her work can be difficult to interpret. She used complex Spanish Baroque poetry techniques, which either make her work less accessible or quite different from the original when translated into contemporary English. When her collected works were published in the 20th century, it contained over 2000 pages. The freedom to produce all of this work was made possible through the support of the Viceroy, which made her an unofficial poet for the court.

In her work, she could cleverly weave different stories together. Like in a trilogy of plays about the sacristy, where the different protagonists each partly play the role of Christ. Her work included Aztec languages and the way Spanish was spoken by the enslaved. Including these languages was to illustrate her perspective, shared by others, that New Spain was different from the Spanish homeland due to it containing these Mexican indigenous cultures. It was felt that the Spanish conquest interrupted an amazing ancient civilization. This view fits in with the emergence of this new local identity – the beginning of a nationalist perspective even? To nuance this, however, is to note that contemporary indigenous people were not treated well and thus not as respected as their bygone culture.

Silly, you men – so very adept
at wrongly faulting womankind,
not seeing you’re alone to blame
for faults you plant in a woman’s mind.

After you’ve won by urgent plea
the right to tarnish her good name,
you still expect her to behave-
you, that coaxed her into shame.

You batter her resistance down
and then, all righteousness, proclaim
that feminine frivolity,
not your persistence, is to blame.

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, the first three stanzas of the poem ‘Foolish Men’ in which she denounces the double standards of men.

During a theological dispute, Juana showcases her excellent knowledge of theology and advocates her right to learn. The then-bishop of Puebla published Juana’s critique of a 40-year-old sermon by a Portuguese Jesuit preacher without her consent and added that she should stick to nun’s things and leave secular matters to men. In response Juana writes ‘La Respuesta a Sor Filotea de la Cruz’, in which she famously quoted an Aragonese poet:

one can perfectly well philosophise while cooking supper.

Sor Juanes Ines de la Cruz, famously quoting an Aragonese poet in ‘La Respuesta a Sor Filotea de la Cruz’, 1691.

This piece of writing, in which she defends women’s rights to education, is her bestseller. Even when, in later centuries, her other works fell out of favour for being too Baroque, this letter continued to be popular. It is now often called a feminist manifesto, but she wouldn’t have known that phrase.

When the Viceroy and his Marie-Louise left, she lost their protection. Her philosophies about female intellect and the right to learn were becoming dangerous. She was too knowledgeable, too popular, so the church started to limit her freedom. This is around the same time that she renewed her vows. Though common for a nun her age, it is difficult to determine to what degree her vow to spend the rest of her life in obedience to God alone, were due to her own commitment or circumstance. Whatever the reason, it resulted in her library and instruments being sold (some claim they were burned). Yet when she died in 1695 due to the plague, it seemed she did not keep to her vow entirely: her cell contained books and finished and unfinished work, indicating she was still writing until the end.

ALSO LOOK UP:

Hildegard von Bingen. She also has her own Brain & Guts lino and story. Hildegarde is another nun who found a scholarly and writerly career within the church, though about 500-600 years earlier.

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