A Woman’s Place: the Life of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

Written By Jonette O'Kelley Miller

The seventeenth century scholar, philosopher, poet, playwright and painter Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, born Juana de Asbaje y Ramírez, de Santillana during Mexico’s colonial period, was, in a word: a trailblazer. Her birth date on November 12 in San Miguel Nepantla, Mexico has been listed as either in the year 1648, or 1651.  

Seventeenth century Mexico into which Sor Juana was born was said to be in a period of transition.  Also known as ‘New Spain,’ Mexico was considered the connection between Spain and the New World of America. While being both cosmopolitan as well as traditional, as a territory of Spain, Mexico was subject to Spain’s Catholic hierarchy, both in regards to its religious and secular life.

Juana was the illegitimate daughter of Isabel Ramírez, a Criolla (mixed heritage of Spanish and Mexican) and Pedro Manuel de Asbaje, a Spanish captain. Even though Mexico was steeped in social classism based on ethnicity, and her father wasn’t active in her upbringing, Juana didn’t experience the period’s socio-cultural stigma of illegitimacy due to her maternal grandfather’s wealth. She, her sisters and her mother lived with her maternal grandfather on his estate.  However, Juana was subject to the period’s established social placement of men and women.

According to Spanish tradition and the concept of Marianismo, a woman’s place was in the home caring for her husband and their children.  Her value was found in her virtue, her dowry and her physical beauty.  In New Spain’s caste system, Mexican women who married Spaniards, or those whose families had dowries were able to live lives of a higher social standing than those who did not.  

It was soon recognized that even as a child, Juana’s passion was to read, write and explore the world around her. When her older sisters went to school, Juana pressed her mother to allow her to go also.  Her appetite for learning was insatiable. Juana even had dreams of attending the University of Mexico City.  When her mother told her only men were allowed to attend the university, Juana unsuccessfully tried to masquerade as a boy.

Being a child prodigy, Juana would write poems and plays for her family. Her favorite place was being surrounded by her grandfather’s books in his extensive library.  After her grandfather died, she realized her dream when her mother sent her to live with her aunt and uncle in Mexico City. Even though as a female she was unable to attend the University, her aunt and uncle allowed her to continue her studies with a private tutor.  Becoming multilingual and well-versed in science, music, botany, history, etc., Juana’s passion for learning was greater than her willingness to submit to the traditional standard of beauty.  Unconstrained by the period’s societal mores, when she felt she wasn’t learning fast enough, she would cut off a lock her “woman’s crown,” her hair.

Due to her gifted mind, as a teenager she was eventually presented to and became a member of the court of the Viceroy Marquis de Mancera.  In her new position, she became a lady in waiting for the Viceroy's wife, becoming her companion and writing poems, letters and plays for her entertainment as well as for other members of the court. At one point, the viceroy had her tested on a plethora of academic subjects by forty scholars from the University. Juana successfully responded to all of the questions put to her; and from that point on, her knowledge and beauty became publicly known. To her delight, she was able to continue her studies in the palace’s extensive library. By outward appearances Juana’s life was one of privilege; yet, it reveals colonial Mexico’s entrenched, historical gender bias that constrained women to second-class social positions. 

As mentioned earlier, seventeenth century women of the lower class in Mexico were relegated to lives of illiteracy. The accepted, sanctioned roles for women were those of wife and mother. Neither role was of interest to Juana. Instead she chose to go into the nunnery. Interestingly, her life pivot wasn’t grounded in pursuing spiritual sacrifice. Rather, depending on the convent she entered, she sought to have freedom in pursuing her scholarship and writing.

For a few months starting in 1667, she joined the Convent of the Discalced Carmelites of St. Joseph, changing her name to Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. However, in 1669, she entered the Convent of the Order of St. Jérôme.  Moving into the St. Jérôme Order, Sor Juana brought all of her books from the Viceroy’s palace and was given her own room for the purpose of research and knowledge. Even though nuns committed to living a cloistered life, because of her previously established notoriety, Sor Juana’s room became a salon with a growing library. Her library, where she often held court entertaining visitors from Europe, members of the viceroy’s court as well as other scholars, and friends, also included her collection of musical instruments and scientific equipment.

Throughout her life, writing in the period’s Baroque style, she produced a prodigious amount of work including poetry, plays and essays; some which made their way to Spain.  As an adult, her burgeoning intellectual prowess informed her writings to focus on activism and the rejection of gender bias. Three of her well-known works La Respuesta (The Answer or The Reply), Losempeños de una casa ( The House of Trials) and Hombres necios que acusáis… (You Foolish Men), a published essay,  comedic play and poem, respectively were treatises highlighting the fact that women were just as erudite as, and in some cases, superior to men.,  In current times she is identified as a protofeminist and is an integral part of Chicana, Feminist, and literary studies.

As to be expected, no matter how eloquent her written presentations, Spain’s Catholic religious leaders (all men) weren’t accepting of a nun becoming popular for writing about secular and religious topics that placed men in a secondary social status. Unfortunately, starting in 1690, she was tricked into participating in a public written debate, which by 1694, caused the Spanish Church to force her to reject her writings and give herself to a life of religious penance.  This included her selling her books along with her musical and scientific collections. The last year of her life was spent caring for her sister nuns in the Order who had been stricken by a plague. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz succumbed to the same plague on April 17, 1695.

Even though subject to the socio-cultural and religious gender bias in which she was born, de la Cruz sought to craft a ‘place’ for herself that was outside of her period’s gender constraints. The two paintings depicted here, while visually the same image, subtly portray Sor Juana’s life differently.  

The first portrait Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz was painted posthumously in 1772 by the Mexican painter Andrés de Islas seventy-seven years following Sor Juana’s death.  It is an oil on canvas, 45.2 inches high and 36.6 inches wide.  The work is done in the Baroque style popular during the 17th and 18th centuries and makes masterful use of deep vibrant colors, and light and dark.

Sor Juana is seen sitting at a desk in her library. Facing the viewer, her gaze isn’t passively demure. She doesn’t look away, and though she is wearing her nun’s habit, she isn’t shown in a supplicant pose. Hers is a reciprocal gaze directly engaging the viewer. In front of her black bodice, under her chin rests her escudo de monja, or nun’s badge (also known as nun’s shield). Her rosary appears on either side of her badge, hanging down her habit’s white sleeves.  A quill held aloft in her right hand is accompanied by other writing implements on her desk. They share space with a journal resting on two books, which is held open by Sor Juana’s left hand. An orange curtain is pulled upwards behind her, and over her right shoulder a variety of books line completely filled bookshelves. It should also be noted, in period portraits of this type, curtains were used to symbolize the person’s elite status. A printed declaration in Spanish hangs from one of the shelves, along with another printed statement appearing on the front of the desk cloth facing the viewer that begins, “FILL COPIA. DE LA M. JUANA INEZ DE LA CRUZ…

Further analysis counters de Islas’ intention of presenting Sor Juana as a scholar and person of high status.  The placement of her nun’s badge and rosary contrasts with the symbolism of her gaze, the volumes of books, and writing implements.  It would appear that, as in life, Sor Juana wasn’t completely unencumbered by her period’s societal and gender constraints.

The escudo de monja was popular in seventeenth and eighteenth century Spain and Mexico.  These circular, or oval discs sized around 5.9 inches were painted on copper plates and worn by nuns when taking vows. Some badges showcased a nun’s particular order; most often they depicted a Biblical scene. Sor Juana’s badge, which shows the Annunciation of the archangel Gabriel speaking to the Virgin Mary, takes the viewer’s focus, after that of Sor Juana’s direct gaze.  The badge serves like a shield between Sor Juana and the secular world. Appearing in the center of her chest immediately under her chin, with her rosary beads hanging on her left and right shoulders, it is a reminder both to her and to the viewer of her ‘place,’ and to whom she ultimately belongs.  At the end of her remarkable life journey, Sor Juana had to divest herself of her created ‘place’ and submit to outside influences. 

Known simply as Sor Juana, the second painting by Mexican artist Mauricio Garcia Vega goes in an interestingly different direction. Created in 2013, Sor Juana is a contemporary rendering of Andre de Islas’ work.

Just as in the de Islas’ portrait, Sor Juana is depicted in the foreground sitting at her desk. The only images clearly seen are the nun in her habit, the nun’s badge under her chin, her holding a quill in her right hand and her left on her journal.  However, the similarities end there. Garcia Vega, who often works in acrylics, is known for using rich, dark colors to create dramatic, distorted images that arrest viewers’ attention. 

In Garcia Vega’s work, rather than the background being neatly filled with books and revealed from behind a curtain as in de Islas’ portrait, the background consists of sweeping brush strokes using mauves, reds, blues, dark purples and yellows; even the desk is gone.  The colors also appear in rectangular blocks; lighter colors highlight the changing planes in Sor Juana’s face.  Darker colors flow across her nun’s habit changing its sleeves and the pages of her journal from a pristine white to folds of blue and purple. Garcia Vega’s rising colors moving across the canvas simulate the wind alluding to both how Sor Juana’s fierce pursuit of knowledge could not be contained, as well as the opposing forces swirling around her. The image as shown in Garcia Vega’s contemporary work more accurately portrays the intellectual, creative, and artistic interests that all came together to be Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, along with the outside influences that sought to rein her in.

All women, at some point, must make choices and determine if we are going to settle for what is, or, seek to find our own ‘place.’  From a contemporary standpoint, it could be said that Sor Juana, by choosing to go into a nunnery, picked another form of imprisonment.  While she was able to shift and afforded the freedom to pursue her scholarly and literary interests, she was constrained to move within specific socio-religious parameters.  The struggle is real. Sor Juana is a she-ro for every woman who realizes the life she is living is not all that there is and struggles to find her own ‘place.’ One of the worst soul deaths is to have to live a life and do work that brings you no joy.

Even in the socially restrictive seventeenth century, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz chose to create a place for herself, where, as best she could within societal constraints, be her true self. She chose not to stay in her prescribed place.  She was curious! Unfortunately, curiosity is often considered a dangerous trait in a woman.  But, why can’t we be curious, explore ourselves and the world around us?  It is up to us to courageously decide to create our own PLACE and, BE!

REFERENCES

Jonette O'Kelley Miller
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