Spanish and Portuguese America, 1784

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (c.1651-1695), Miguel Cabrera, 18^th c.

From James D. Huck, Jr. "de la Cruz, Sor Juana Inés." In Modern Mexico, 150-152. Understanding Modern Nations. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2018. Gale eBooks (accessed October 21, 2023). https://link-gale-com.sfuhs.idm.oclc.org/apps/doc/CX7418300085/GVRL?u=san63488&sid=bookmark-GVRL&xid=ff7f54b8.:

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz was a nun in 17th-century Mexico who possessed an extraordinary intellect and poetic talent. She was a proto-feminist who, instead of being resigned to her fate of the confinements of marriage and family, and the limitations on advanced study that faced women of means in her day, instead chose a monastic religious life so as to be able to engage her intellectual pursuits. Two gender-related points here stand out: (1) Sor Juana, as a woman, was limited to only a few choices with regard to a path for her life. She could either have eschewed studies and the intellectual life for that of motherhood, marriage, and family, or she could have sacrificed motherhood, marriage, and family in order to pursue an intellectual and scholarly life as a member of a religious order. The possibility of having a family and marriage alongside an intellectual and scholarly life simply did not exist. Obviously, she chose the scholarly and intellectual life, which she managed to realize, though at a very high cost to her independence. (2) In the midst of embracing submission and obedience to patriarchal authority, she was able to stand up as an advocate for women in the face of this domineering patriarchy.
Sor Juana was born in Mexico in 1651, where she remained until her death at age 43. From very early in her life, Sor Juana threw herself into study and learning. By the time Sor Juana entered religious life, she had already made a name for herself as an intellectual prodigy. She was completely self-taught and by her early teens had mastered the classical languages of Latin and Greek, as well as the indigenous Mexican language of Nahuatl, in which she composed a number of poems. She even submitted herself to an unscripted and open-ended examination by leading scholars and intellects, at which she acquitted herself well and thoroughly impressed her examiners with the profundity and extensiveness of her knowledge. At the age of 16, Sor Juana had committed herself to life as a member of a women's religious community, and at the age of 18 she took vows as a sister of the Heironymite order. She remained cloistered in the Heironymite monastery in Mexico City from 1669 until her death in 1695. Despite her very limited mobility, Sor Juana lived a rich life of the mind, and she was in regular contact with some of the most important intellectuals and literary figures of the day, including Don Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora. She was known for her scientific experiments as well as her literary writings, and she cultivated a special friendship with the wife of the viceroy, who protected and defended her from her critics, one of whom was the powerful bishop of Puebla, Manuel Fernández de Santa Cruz.

1648: Juana Inés Ramírez born as illegitimate daughter into a poor family on the farmstead of San Miguel Nepantla;
1656: Sent to live with maternal aunt's family in México (City); learnt Latin;
1664: Enters the Court (aged 16); lionized as prodigy and for her beauty; she won the affections of the vicereine (wife of the viceroy), Doña Leonor Carreto, Marquesa de Mancera (see poem below), and was admitted into her service.
1668: Enters Convent of San Jerónimo (aged 20); wrote many poems, plays, studied philosophy, music and science;
1691: Writes famous "Respuesta a Sor Filotea," defending right of women to study and write; comes under pressure from Ecclesiastical hierarchy to abandon her studies;
1694: Abandons her studies under great pressure; forced to sell her books and musical and scientific instruments;
1695: Plague hits convent; Sor Juana contracts plague and dies 17th April, aged 46.

"You Men" Silly, you men--so very adept at wrongly faulting womankind, not seeing you're alone to blame for faults you plant in 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. When it comes to bravely posturing, your witlessness must take the prize: you're the child that makes a bogeyman, and then recoils in fear and cries. Presumptuous beyond belief, you'd have the woman you pursue be Thais when you're courting her, Lucretia once she falls to you. For plain default of common sense, could any action be so queer as oneself to cloud the mirror, then complain that it's not clear?

"On the death of that most excellent lady, the Marquise de Mancera" Let them die with you, Laura, now you are dead, these longings that go out to you in vain, these eyes on whom you once bestowed a lovely light never to gleam again. Let this unfortunate lyre that echoes still to sounds you woke, perish calling your name, and may these clumsy scribblings represent black tears my pen has shed to ease its pain. Let Death himself feel pity, and regret that, bound by his own law, he could not spare you, and Love lament the bitter circumstance that if once, in his desire for pleasure, he wished for eyes that they might feast on you, now weeping is all those eyes could ever do.