Juana Inés de la Cruz
Juana Inés de Asbaje y Ramírez de Santillana, better known as Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz , was a Hieronymite nun and a Novohispanic writer, philosopher, composer and poet of the Baroque period, nicknamed "The Tenth Muse", "The Mexican Phoenix", and "The Phoenix of America" by her contemporary critics. She was also a student of science. She was among the main contributors to the Spanish Golden Age, alongside Juan de Espinosa Medrano, Juan Ruiz de Alarcón and Garcilaso de la Vega "el Inca", and is considered one of the most important female writers in Spanish language literature and Mexican literature.
Sor Juana has been significant to many communities across time, having been presented as a candidate for Catholic sainthood; a symbol of Mexican nationalism; and a paragon of freedom of speech, women's rights, and sexual diversity, making her a figure of great controversy and debate to this day.
Life
Early life
Juana was born in San Miguel Nepantla near Mexico City as the illegitimate daughter of Don Pedro Manuel de Asuaje y Vargas-Machuca, a Spanish navy captain from the Canary Islands involved in colonial transatlantic shipping and trade, and Doña Isabel Ramírez de Santillana y Rendón, a distinguished criolla, whose father leased the Hacienda de Panoayan, near Mexico City.File:MainHousePanoaya.JPG|thumb|280x280px|Hacienda of Panoayan in Amecameca, residence of the Ramírez de Santillana family.There are two different baptism registrations that have been attributed to her, one under the name of "Juana" in 1648, and another one under the name of "Inés" in 1651, still a matter of academic research and debate. There is, nevertheless, agreement that she was one of the three children that Doña Isabel Ramírez de Santillana had out of wedlock with Don Pedro de Asuaje. Since Sor Juana's father left her life at an early age and remained largely unknown to her, Sor Juana's infancy occurred entirely around her mother's family in the hacienda of Panaoyan, in Amecameca, leased by her maternal grandfather, and home to the ample Ramírez de Santillana family. Among her relatives, several women with the name "Inés" have been noted, including her grandmother Inés de Brenes, her maternal-aunt Inés Ramírez de Santillana, and her first-cousin Inés de Brenes y Mendoza, married to a grandson of Antonio de Saavedra Guzmán, the first ever published American-born poet.Later described as a child prodigy, Sor Juana was educated at home at the Hacienda de Papaya, being exposed to Latin and Nahuatl, and learning philosophy, and mathematics. She was given free access to her grandfather's private library, the wide array of which lended itself well to her self-taught studies.
During her childhood, Inés often hid in the hacienda chapel to read her grandfather's books from the adjoining library, something forbidden to girls. By the age of three, she had learned how to read and write Latin. By the age of five, she reportedly could do accounts. At age eight, she composed a poem on the Eucharist. By adolescence, Inés had mastered Greek logic, and at age thirteen she was teaching Latin to young children. For long it was thought that she also learned Nahuatl, an Aztec language, and wrote short poems in that language as a child, but this has been challenged by more recent scholarship.
In 1664, at the age of 16, Inés 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, without success. Without the ability to obtain a formal education, Juana continued her studies privately. Her family's influential position had gained her the position of lady-in-waiting at the colonial viceroy's court, where she came under the tutelage of the Vicereine Donna Eleonora del Carretto, a member of one of Italy's most prominent families, and wife of the Viceroy of New Spain Don Antonio Sebastián de Toledo, Marquis of Mancera. The viceroy Marquis de Mancera, wishing to test the learning and intelligence of the 17-year-old, invited several theologians, jurists, philosophers, and poets to a meeting, during which she had to answer many questions unprepared and explain several difficult points on various scientific and literary subjects. The manner in which she acquitted herself astonished all present and greatly increased her reputation. Her literary accomplishments garnered her fame throughout New Spain. She was much admired in the viceregal court, and she received several proposals of marriage, which she declined.
After joining a nunnery in 1667, Sor Juana began writing poetry and prose dealing with such topics as love, women's rights, and religion. She turned her nun's quarters into a salon, visited by New Spain's female intellectual elite, including Doña Eleonora del Carreto, Marchioness of Mancera, and Doña Maria Luisa Gonzaga, Countess of Paredes de Nava, both Vicereines of the New Spain, among others. Her criticism of misogyny and the hypocrisy of men led to her condemnation by the Bishop of Puebla, and in 1694 she was forced to sell her collection of books and focus on charity towards the poor. She died the next year, having caught the plague while treating her sisters.
Religious life and name change
In 1667, Inés entered the Monastery of St. Joseph, a community of the Discalced Carmelite nuns, as a postulant, where she remained but a few months. Later, in 1669, she entered the monastery of the Hieronymite nuns, which had more relaxed rules, where she changed her name to Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, probably in reference to Sor Juana de la Cruz Vázquez Gutiérrez who was a Spanish nun whose intellectual accomplishments earned her one of the few dispensations for women to preach the gospel. Another potential namesake was Saint Juan de la Cruz, one of the most accomplished authors of the Spanish Baroque. She chose to become a nun so that she could study as she wished since she wanted "to have no fixed occupation which might curtail my freedom to study."In the convent and perhaps earlier, Sor Juana became intimate friends with Don Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora, who visited her in the convent's locutorio. She stayed cloistered in the Convent of Santa Paula of the Hieronymite in Mexico City from 1669 until her death in 1695, and there she studied, wrote, and collected a large library of books. The Viceroy and Vicereine of New Spain became her patrons; they supported her and had her writings published in Spain. She addressed some of her poems to paintings of her friend and patron María Luisa Manrique de Lara y Gonzaga, daughter of Vespasiano Gonzaga, Duca di Guastala, Luzara e Rechiolo, and Inés María Manrique, 9th Countess de Paredes, whom she also addressed as Lísida.
In November 1690, the bishop of Puebla, Manuel Fernández de Santa Cruz published, under the pseudonym of Sor Filotea, and without her permission, Sor Juana's critique of a 40-year-old sermon by Father António Vieira, a Portuguese Jesuit preacher. Although Sor Juana's intentions for the work, called Carta Atenagórica are left to interpretation, many scholars have opted to interpret the work as a challenge to the hierarchical structure of the Catholic Church.
Along with Carta Atenagórica, the bishop also published his own letter in which he said she should focus on religious instead of secular studies. He published his criticisms to use them to his advantage against the priest, and while he agreed with her criticisms, he believed that as a woman, she should devote herself to prayer and give up her writings.
In response to her critics, Sor Juana wrote a letter, Respuesta a Sor Filotea de la Cruz, in which she defended women's right to formal education. She also advocated for women's right to serve as intellectual authorities, not only through the act of writing, but also through the publication of their writing. By putting women, specifically older women, in positions of authority, Sor Juana argued, women could educate other women. Resultingly, Sor Juana argued, this practice could also avoid potentially dangerous situations involving male teachers in intimate settings with young female students. In 1691, she was reprimanded and ordered to stop writing after the exposure of a private letter in which she wrote of the right of women to education.
In addition to her status as a woman in a self-prescribed position of authority, Sor Juana's radical position made her an increasingly controversial figure. She famously remarked by quoting an Aragonese poet and echoing St. Teresa of Ávila: "One can perfectly well philosophize while cooking supper." In response, Francisco de Aguiar y Seijas, Archbishop of Mexico joined other high-ranking officials in condemning Sor Juana's "waywardness." In addition to opposition she received for challenging the patriarchal structure of the Catholic Church, Sor Juana was repeatedly criticized for believing that her writing could achieve the same philanthropic goals as community work.
By 1693, Sor Juana seemingly ceased writing to avoid risking official censure. Although there is no undisputed evidence of her renouncing her writing, there are documents showing her agreeing to undergo penance. Her name is affixed to such a document in 1694, but the tone of the supposed handwritten penitentials is in rhetorical and autocratic, in contrast to her normally lyrical style. One is signed "Yo, la Peor de Todas". She is said to have sold all her books, then an extensive library of more than 4,000 volumes, as well as her musical and scientific instruments. Other sources report that her defiance toward the Church led to the confiscation of all of her books and instruments, although the bishop himself agreed with the contents of her letters.
Of more than one hundred unpublished works, only a few of Sor Juana's writings have survived, which are known as the Complete Works. According to Octavio Paz, her writings were saved by the vicereine.
On, at the age of just 46, Sor Juana died after ministering to other nuns stricken during a plague. Sigüenza y Góngora delivered the eulogy at her funeral.