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Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, 17th Century Nun and Poet, shown here as a teenaged courtier before becoming a nun.

 


ABOUT SOR JUANA
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz was a 17th century nun, self-taught scholar and acclaimed writer of the Latin American colonial period and the Hispanic Baroque. She was also a staunch advocate for women’s rights.  Juana Inés de la Cruz’s intelligence and scholarship became known throughout the country during her teen years. She began her life as a nun in 1667 so that she could study at will. After taking her vows, Sor Juana read tirelessly and wrote plays and poetry, often challenging societal values and becoming an early proponent of women’s rights. Sor Juana is heralded for her Respuesta a Sor Filotea, which defends women’s rights to educational access, and is credited as the first published feminist of the New World. She died in Mexico
in 1695.

Early Years

Juana Inés de la Cruz was born out of wedlock in San Miguel Nepantla, Tepetlixpa—now called Nepantla de Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz in her honor—near Mexico City, circa November 12, 1651, when Mexico was still a Spanish territory.

She was the illegitimate child of a Spanish Captain, Pedro Manuel de Asbaje, and a Criolla woman, Isabel Ramírez. Her father was absent from her life and she was baptized 2 December 1651 and described on the baptismal rolls as “a daughter of the Church”. She was raised in Amecameca, where her maternal grandfather owned an hacienda.

Juana was a devoutly religious child who often hid in the hacienda chapel to read her grandfather’s books from the adjoining library, something forbidden to girls. She learned how to read and write Latin at the age of three. By age five, she reportedly could do accounts. At age eight, she composed a poem on the Eucharist.

By adolescence, Juana had mastered Greek logic, and at age 13 she was teaching Latin to young children. She also learned the Aztec language of Nahuatl, and wrote some short poems in that language.

 
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz by Friar Miguel de Herrera (1700-1789)

In 1664, aged 12, Juana was sent to live in Mexico City. She asked her mother’s permission to disguise herself as a male student so that she could enter the university there. Not being allowed to do this, she continued her studies privately. In 1667, owing to her desire “to have no fixed occupation which might curtail my freedom to study,” Sor Juana began her life as a nun. She moved in 1669 to the Convent of Santa Paula of the Hieronymite in Mexico City, where she remained cloistered for the rest of her life.

Juana had plenty of time to study and write in the convent, and she amassed a large library. She also gained the patronage of the Viceroy and Vicereine of New Spain, and they supported her and had her works published in Spain.

Writing Development

Sor Juana’s enduring importance and literary success are partly attributable to her mastery of the full range of poetic forms and themes of the Spanish Golden Age, and her writings display inventiveness, wit and a wide range of knowledge. Juana employed all of the poetic models of her day, including sonnets and romances, and she drew on wide-ranging—secular and nonsecular—sources. Unlimited by genre, she also wrote dramatic, comedic and scholarly works—especially unusual for a nun.

Sor Juana’s most important plays include brave and clever women, and her famous poem, Hombres necios  (Foolish Men), accuses men of behaving illogically by criticizing women. Her most significant poem, Primero sueo (First Dream), published in 1692, is at once personal and universal, recounting the soul’s quest for knowledge.