Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

Colonial Mexican poet and playwright

• Born: November 12, 1651
• Died: April 17, 1695

Sister Cruz was an outstanding poet of Mexico’s colonial period. A key figure in Latin American literature and in seventeenth century Spanish poetry, Cruz was an intellectual woman in a culture in which learning was considered a properly masculine pursuit.

Early Life

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (SAWR KHWAHN-ah ee-NAYS thay lah KREWS) was born Juana Inés de Asbaje y Ramírez de Santillana in San Miguel Nepantla, New Spain, a small village in the foothills of the Popocatépetl volcano, probably in November, 1648. The traditional date of her birth, based on a biography by the Jesuit Diego Calleja, was November 12, 1651, but scholars have found a baptismal record for her parish for a female child dated December 2, 1648, which is believed to be hers. She is recorded as a “daughter of the Church,” since her parents, Isabel Ramírez de Santillana and Pedro Manuel de Asbaje, were not officially married.

Juana Inés was one of six children, all illegitimate. Her father seems to have left when Juana Inés was very young, and she scarcely mentions him in her writings. After Captain Diego Ruiz Lozano entered the household, Juana Inés was sent to the house of her maternal grandfather, where she was reared and where she had access to a library. She learned to read at the age of three, and at the age of eight, she composed a dramatic poem (loa) to the Eucharist. Eager to learn, she mastered Latin in about twenty lessons.

When she was sixteen, Juana Inés went to the Spanish viceroy’s court as a lady of the viceroy’s wife, the marquesa de Mancera. She very soon became a favorite of the marquesa, as the two apparently shared a love of learning and of the intellectual life. At one point, the viceroy invited a group of about forty professors to question Juana Inés on her knowledge, and she astounded everyone with her answers. At this age, Juana was also a strikingly beautiful young woman.

A life at court did not provide a young woman in Juana Inés’s circumstances with an opportunity for marriage, and she herself refers to a “total disinclination to marriage.” Considering the options available to her, especially with her desire to continue studying, she chose, in 1667, to enter the Convent of the Discalced Carmelites. The order was too severe for her, however, and she became ill and left after three months. A year later, she entered the Order of Saint Jerome, where she remained for the rest of her life.

Life’s Work

When Juana Inés took the veil in the Convent of Saint Jerome (San Jerónimo) on February 24, 1669, and officially became Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, she was not yet twenty-one. She was from then on bound to the regulations and activities of the convent, which were not especially strict, but the communal life did provide interruptions that sometimes took her away from her studies. Nevertheless, she read broadly to fill in the many gaps in her education—she was essentially self-taught—and she also wrote extensively. From 1669 to 1690, she built up a considerable library collection at the convent, primarily for her own use.

Cruz refers to her frail health on several occasions, and she was seriously ill with typhoid fever in 1671 or 1672. As a result, she wrote about the experience of death in a sonnet dedicated to “Laura” and a romance (a poem in octosyllabic verse with alternate lines of assonance) addressed to Fray Payo Enríquez de Rivera. Even her early writings show a sure skill in using the styles and forms of her times, and her own intelligence and sensitivity for nuances of meaning are evident.

Throughout her life, Cruz wrote many poems, but it is impossible to date them accurately, since the originals have been lost and her style did not evolve. From the beginning, she showed a control of chiaroscuro and a sense of form and proportion. As is true of other works of the Baroque period, Cruz’s poems are not personal revelations but rather demonstrations of talent in using correct form. Within a given form, individual talent emerges through ingenious use of well-known comparisons and images or in the particular emphasis or tone.

In 1680, the marqués de la Laguna was appointed viceroy of New Spain, and the period of his reign, 1680-1688, was a very rich period in Cruz’s intellectual life. She even heralded his arrival with a symbolic work entitled El Neptuno alegórico (1680; allegorical Neptune). Completely in tune with Baroque tradition, Cruz skillfully draws an allegorical portrait of the new viceroy, using the device of an emblem or enigma. Primero sueño (1692; First Dream , 1983) begins with a poetic rendering of a slumbering world through mythology and imagery but develops into a philosophical argument on the relation of the intellect to the senses using the vocabulary and reasoning of Scholasticism. El divino Narciso (pr. c. 1680, pb. 1690; The Divine Narcissus , 1945) is a sacramental play employing allegorical characters and representing the search of Human Nature (a woman) for Christ (in the form of Narcissus). Much of her other work consists of poems for special occasions.

Cruz’s Carta atenagórica (1690; the Athenagoric letter) was published as a small pamphlet. The work, in the form of a letter, is a critique of a sermon given by the Portuguese Jesuit Antonio de Vieyra on Holy Thursday in 1650. She put her thoughts on paper at the request of someone with whom she had discussed the topic in casual conversation, and the letter came into the hands of Manuel Fernández de Santa Cruz, bishop of Puebla, who wrote a brief prologue and had it published. This prologue, in the form of a letter signed Sor Filotea de la Cruz and dated November 25, 1690, did not forbid Cruz from studying but did suggest that she study more in the area of sacred letters.

Three months later, on March 1, 1691, Sor Juana wrote her Respuesta de la poetisa a la muy ilustre Sor Filotea de la Cruz (pb. 1700; Reply to Sor Filotea de la Cruz , 1982). In this famous manuscript, she defends her thirst for knowledge. First, she recognizes her overpowering yearning to know and says that she learns not only from books but also from nature and everyday life. In essence, she defines herself as an intellectual. She then addresses the question of whether women should study. Since she is writing to the bishop, she readily agrees that she should study sacred works more, but the letter itself reveals a considerable knowledge of the Bible and religious writers. In her argument, she reviews her own background and learning and even her decision to become a nun.

Within the convent, there was much opposition to her studies, and, although Cruz does not mention people by name, it is clear that she suffered because she could not quiet her intellect. The letter is a clearly considered and well-formulated argument, bringing to bear the use of reason, as well as authority (a weaker form of justification). The letters of Cruz and the bishop caused some disagreement with the Church, and although the bishop favored Cruz, her own confessor, Jesuit Padre Antonio Núñez de Miranda, broke ties with her. Cruz then decided to renounce the world by selling her library and giving the money to the poor. In addition, she signed an affirmation of faith in her own blood. When an epidemic struck the convent in 1695, Cruz helped the sick members of the community until she herself became ill. She died from the disease on April 17, leaving unanswered the mystery of her renunciation.

Significance

Cruz is a key figure in the history of Latin American literature, not only for her poetry but also for her important prose works Reply to Sor Filotea de la Cruz and Carta atenagórica, for which she is considered an early defender of women’s emancipation. She believed that women, like men, should be allowed full intellectual development.

Cruz’s poetic accomplishments, however, are what secure her place in Latin American literary history. While her poems were not original in the modern sense, wherein personal experience is important in poetry, she skillfully followed the tradition of the great Spanish writers Luis de Góngora y Argote and Pedro Calderón de la Barca . Her work is not distinctly American as opposed to peninsular Spanish, but she is honored as a Mexican poet nevertheless, because she was a part of the literature written in the New World and because she herself was a product of a criollo family. Her writings include an important body of lyric poetry, two stage comedies, and three religious allegories. The range of her abilities is reflected in her poetry, which could be intellectual or passionate, complicated or in popular style, witty or serious. Although she lived at the end of the Baroque period, the literature of which has been criticized as imitative and often extravagant, Cruz’s poetry demonstrates a skill and clarity of design that is exceptional and merits for her a distinguished place in the history of Spanish and Latin American literature.

Cruz’s Major Works

1668

• Amor es más laberinto (pr. 1689; with Juan de Guevara)

c. 1680

• El divino Narciso (The Divine Narcissus, 1945)

c. 1680

• Los empeños de una casa (adaptation of on Lope de Vega Carpio’s play La discreta enamorada; A Household Plagued by Love, 1942)

1689

• Inundación castálida

1692

• El cetro de José

c. 1692

• El mártir del sacramento, San Hermenegildo

1692

• Segundo volumen de las obras

1700

• Fama y obras póstumas

1700

• Respuesta de la poetisa a la muy ilustre Sor Filotea de la Cruz (Reply to Sor Filotea de la Cruz, 1982)

Bibliography

Cruz, Sister Juana Inés de la. A Woman of Genius: The Intellectual Autobiography of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Translated with an introduction by Margaret Sayers Peden. Salisbury, Conn.: Lime Rock Press, 1982. An English translation of Cruz’s memoirs.

Flynn, Gerard. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Boston: Twayne, 1971. Introduction to Cruz and her work. Includes biographical information, review and criticism of her poetry and drama, and quotations from her work with English translations.

Gonzalez, Michelle A. Sor Juana: Beauty and Justice in the Americas. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2003. A recent biography of Cruz, examining her life, work, and theology. The author argues that by joining aesthetics with the quest for truth and justice, Cruz was a forerunner of the contemporary liberation theology movement.

Merrim, Stephanie. Early Modern Women’s Writing and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt University Press, 1999. Situates the work of Cruz within the field of seventeenth century women’s writing in Spanish, English, and French. The protofeminist writings of Cruz are used as a benchmark for the examination of the literary production of her female contemporaries.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗, ed. Feminist Perspectives on Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University Press, 1991. A collection of essays by literary critics and translators of Cruz. Discusses her life, time, and work in the context of feminist criticism.

Montross, Constance M. Virtue or Vice? Sor Juana’s Use of Thomistic Thought. Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1981. Examines Cruz’s use of Scholastic doctrine and methodology, specifically the ideas of Saint Thomas Aquinas. The author analyzes the combination of belief and questioning in the Carta atenagórica, the Reply to Sor Filotea de la Cruz, and First Dream.

Paz, Octavio. Sor Juana: Or, The Traps of Faith. Translated by Margaret Sayers Peden. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988. A biography of Cruz by a leading Mexican poet, essayist, and cultural critic. Paz emphasizes Cruz’s uniqueness as a poet and focuses on her struggle for an intellectual and creative life. Includes portraits of Cruz and other illustrations plus a helpful listing of Spanish literary terms.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗, ed. Mexican Poetry: An Anthology. Translated by Samuel Beckett. Reprint. New York: Grove Press, 1985. Paz’s introduction to the history of Mexican poetry includes a discussion of Cruz’s work. Also contains translations of twelve of Cruz’s poems.