By Carly Diaz
Sister Juana Inés de La Cruz was born in 1651 in New Spain. She entered Spanish court life when the Viceroy, the Marquis de Mancera, invited her to Mexico City. Juana was well-educated before arriving at court and had a mind of her own. She often challenged the ways in which society viewed women. In her writings, she discusses education and the double standards in her male-dominated society. Juana might even have been the first person to do so (in New Spain). Sister Juana’s experiences at court and in the society of her time pressed her to write many of her poems. In “You Foolish Men,” she calls out contemporaries for their sexist hypocrisy. Sister Juana Inés de La Cruz also battled the criticism that came with creating some of the first feminist essays and documents.
Sister Juana Inés de La Cruz was raised in the Baroque Age–an age in which many things were spectacular. The Baroque period coincided with religious upheaval as the Church in Rome tried to reassert itself amidst the Protestant Reformation. The drama and tension of the era are reflected in the Baroque Arts, not excluding Sister Juana’s. Her poems have some common Baroque religious undertones, concentrating on the sins of man and mentioning that man “unite[s] the world and the flesh” (69). Sister Juana has been called the “Bridge to the Enlightenment” because she was ahead of her time in her ideas about gender equality.
Sister Juana Inés de La Cruz challenges the basic roles that society deemed fit for women. In many of her works, she argues for the right of women to be educated: “Who has forbidden women to engage in private and individual studies? Have they not a rational soul as men do?” Sister Juana spent many years in the court of the Viceroy, working for his wife as a lady-in-waiting. It is in this Viceregal court that she likely became such a passionate feminist because court life in the 1600’s was cruel to women. Women were controlled and often represented as irresponsible creatures who could easily fall into lives of sin without guidance. Surely Sister Juana did not enjoy this assumption, as she was already more than qualified to take care of herself. After five years of court, Sister Juana left to join a nunnery. In her letters, she discusses her love of learning and admits that she joined the Church (in part) so that she could further her extensive studies and continue to write.
Sister Juana’s “You Foolish Men” (written at the height of her power) does not hesitate to criticize the more hypocritical men of her era. She calls them “inconsistent fools” and addresses their “stupidity” and “arrogance” (35, 34, and 66). “You Foolish Men” addresses the main double standard Sister Juana observed at court. She points out that men will beg and plead with a woman for intimacy and then (if she does eventually relent) consider her sinful: “She condemns the inconsistency of men, who blame women for what they themselves have caused” (1, 2). It is so illogical to beg for something and then think worse of someone once they give it to you. On the other hand, if the woman refuses the man’s persuasion, well, she is an ingrate “if she turns you down” (32). How silly of her not to know her place in society. In this patriarchal system, a woman cannot quite win no matter what she does. Sister Juana Inés de La Cruz was exposed to this problem when she joined the Spanish court, where men are sure to have put her in the same situations. In her poems, she also addresses prostitution, the profession which society deemed most sinful. In New Spain, prostitutes were demonized. But, still, men of the court guiltlessly turned to such prostitutes. Society (of course) did not condemn them. Sister Juana opposes this arrangement, asking us who, in fact, is more wicked—“She who sins because she’s paid, or he who pays so he may sin” (56, 57). Sister Juana argues that men must “stop [their] own solicitations” before accusing women of being sinners (62).
Sister Juana Inés de La Cruz gained many adversaries by being both a female and a public intellectual. She criticized several powerful men and suggested that perhaps they were the troublemakers (rather than women). In the late 1600’s, the Bishop of Pueblo, under the (female) pseudonym Sor Filotea de la Cruz, published Sister Juana’s critique on a popular Jesuit sermon without her permission, as well as his own critique of Juana’s ideas and lack of religious context. In response, Sor Juana wrote A Respuesta a Sor Filotea, in which she fervently presses for the expansion of rights for women—including the right to be educated. Unfortunately, this only brought about more criticism. The Archbishop and his supporters forced Sister Juana Inés de La Cruz to resign from all secular work.
Sister Juana Inés de La Cruz was the first major literary figure of the New World. In a society shaped by patriarchy, Sister Juana managed to educate herself and become a free thinker. Writing with Baroque-style emotion and enlightened ideas about equality, Sister Juana became one of the most important philosophers of the emerging Enlightenment by critiquing social norms and speaking out against the double standards imposed upon women in the 17th Century.
Works Cited
“Baroque.” Baroque. Rice University. 2016. Web. 10 Apr. 2016.
De La Cruz, Juana Ines. “You Foolish Men.” Experience Humanities. By Roy T. Matthews, F. DeWitt Platt, and Thomas F. X. Noble. McGraw-Hill Learning Solutions, 2011. Print.
De La Cruz, Juana Ines. Letter to Father Nunez. 1681. Women in World History. 1997. Web. 10 Apr. 2016.
Matthews, Roy T., F. DeWitt Platt, and Thomas F. X. Noble. Experience Humanities. McGraw-Hill Learning Solutions, 2011. Print.
Merriam, Stephanie. “Sor Juana Ines De La Cruz.” Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia Britannica. 2016. Web.10 Apr. 2016.
“Sor Juana Ines De La Cruz.” Poets.org. Academy of American Poets. 2016. Web. 10 Apr. 2016.
Image: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz [detail] by Miguel Cabrera via the Wikimedia Commons