By Carmen Chang,
“The poet defended the rights of minorities and always showed a pure love for knowledge. Three and a half centuries after her profession of faith, it is important to reflect on her life and work, as it continues to have an impact on society.”
José Pablo Espindola, 2019.
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz is among the elites who marked the 17th century not only in Mexico, her country of origin, but also in Spain, where her texts have found a large readership. The objective we have set ourselves in this work is to seek to deepen the intellectual vocation and the reasons for Sor Juana’s decision to devote herself to monastic life. During our analysis, we will try to see if the convent was a space of freedom or prison and the impact of this choice on her intellectual thought. One source of inspiration is a quote from Octavio Paz (1982) used in the presentation of his book Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz or The Traps of Faith, on November 3, 1982, at the Autonomous University of Madrid, according to which: «Sor Juana became a nun to think.»
According to Rosa María Pereda (1982), Juana de Asbaje y Ramírez de Santillana, born in the Mexican population of Nepantla in 1648 (possibly 1651) and died in Mexico in 1695, was very soon known as Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Because of her fame, she was known for other rewarding adventures, such as the Phoenix of Mexico, an American poet and the Tenth Musa. This nun spoke Latin, Nahuatl and Spanish. She was self-taught, and her training was dependent on the large library she inherited from her maternal grandfather and the private collection she owned at the Convent of Saint Jerome. In addition to her great love for science, she was both a poet and a playwright. She was a cultured and patriarchal woman: a writer and religious pioneer of women’s poetry and in the demand for women’s education at a time when women had to stay away from these fields.
Of early intelligence, prodigious talent and an illiterate Mexican Creole mother and Spanish military father, she learned to read and write at a very young age, between three and six, according to some. «In the feminist nothingness of the eighteenth century, she had the audacity to devote her life to study and writing and not to a husband or a progeny.» That is why she became a nun, first Carmelite, then Hieronymite, not so much by divine vocation as by necessity to find space for herself and to devote herself to knowledge. She converted her cell into a vast library and a cultural meeting centre. Thanks to her determination, late Baroque literature, during the Golden Age of Spanish Letters, saw in her splendour one of her most eminent writers who fought for women’s equality, becoming a proto-feminist referent. She also fought for the rights of other disadvantaged groups, such as Aboriginal and Black people.
Mexican poet and essayist Octavio Paz, author of the book Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: The Traps of Faith (1982), devoted eight years to this essay to deepen the life of Sor Juana. Octavio Paz stressed that this ambivalent figure of religious and writer was «an intellectual [integral], who, as such, [had to face] the orthodoxy and power within which it was integrated, and who suffers in itself from the collaboration of ideology with its accusers to the point of accusing itself.» This Mexican writer was fascinated by the literary production and the mysterious personality of this singular nun, passionate about knowledge. Her feminine singularity emanates from a particular vision for the time because she thinks that «she must neutralize her sex to be able to access the desire to know.» Such a decision is neither fortuitous nor thoughtless, if not conscientious.
The reasons for Sor Juana’s decision
According to Martha Lilia Tenorio Trillo and Lázaro Tello Pedro y José de Jesús Palacio Serrato (2018), around 1659 Juana de Asbaje settled in Mexico (now Mexico D.F.), the capital of New Spain, a city known for its cultural vitality and effervescent literature. «She would have lived with relatives, the Mata, until about 1664, when, at the age of 16, explains Jesuit father Diego Calleja, her relatives would have calculated the risk of being persecuted for her discreet intelligence and remarkable beauty.»
That is why, while she was still a teenager, her well-to-do relatives brought her into the service of the Mexican vice queen. Famous for her intelligence and courted for her beauty, Juana quickly became the centre of attraction for the viceregal court. She was admired for a short time for her physical and intellectual qualities. Her life in the royal palace lasted almost two years, namely from seventeen to nineteen years, from August 1667 to February 1669, deducting the six months [sic the three months] that she spent as a novice in the Convent of the Discalced Carmelites before she decided to enter definitively into the Order Jerome, because she had no other choice in the colonial context, if she did not become a nun, it would have been very difficult for her to devote herself to the study.
Juana de Asbaje’s decision to become a nun is perceived as incomprehensible, especially for its suddenness. According to some researchers, the main reason why she opted for the life of the convent was her great interest in «the exercise of knowledge, the strengthening of the capacity for research and the discovery of the communicating vessels between the different fields, all that leads to a firmer, safe and more joyful step to knowledge».Other critics and chroniclers detect in the choice of this path a pitiful or biting story. They argue that this decision was due to romantic disillusionment, some of which claim to be echoed in «sonnets in love with the nun, where reference is made to a certain Alcino, whose behaviour was supposed to be dishonest». It should be noted, however, that the lay and religious commonly wrote the love theme in Baroque poetry. In her Reply to Sor Philotea, Sor Juana herself declared the reasons for her enclavement which were «her vigorous and powerful inclination to letters, «her total denial of marriage, and finally the «security she desired for her salvation». like the real reasons she made that choice.
Other critics and chroniclers detect in the choice of this path a pitiful or biting story. Other researchers attribute his decision to her secret and forbidden affair with the vice-queen Maria Luisa Manrique de Lara and Gonzaga, countess of Paredes, marquise of the Lagoon and vice-queen of New Spain. The latter was the protector and promoter of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, who became a writer who dedicated her pen to the women’s cause. They shared the same principles, but above all, they both knew how important it was to respect women’s rights. In the introduction of his book, Téllez-Pon pointed out that «the relationship between the nun and the vice-queen went beyond «palatial incense, but only a few devoted themselves to collecting or publishing poems as testimonies of this relationship».
Their affectionate friendship seemed suspicious in the eyes of some and gradually began to arouse rumours. But none of them publicly confessed to this suspected relationship. It should be noted that some of Sor Juana Inés’ poems are read as complaints, the destination of which can only be Maria Luisa Manrique, of which here is an example: «Divine Lysi, excuse me if I dare or call you that way, while even if I am yours, I do not deserve/… So, when I call you, I don’t pretend or judge that you are mine; only that I want to be yours.»
References
- BELLINI, Giuseppe, Nueva historia de la literatura hispanoamericana (LITERATURA Y SOCIEDAD. L/S. nº 60) (Spanish Edition) Format Kindle, Castalia, 2011.
- BENASSY-BERLING, Marie-Cécile, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, une expression des élites culturelles mexicaines du XVIIe siècle, Caravelle. Cahiers du monde hispanique et luso-brésilien, Année 1996, 67, p. 23-36. Available here
- Biblioteca de la Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, El amor sin tabúes entre Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz y la virreina de México, Lima, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 2017. Available here
- CAMPOAMOR, Clara, Los poetas. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Madrid, Ediciones Júcar, 1983
