Veronica Ramirez

Before Feminism: Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz

Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz is a writer I had not encountered before in my studies in Literature. The scope of topics that Sor Juana addresses and the variety of techniques she uses, such as music, poetry, and prose, are impressive for any artist, but they seem astounding for a self-educated seventeenth-century Mexican nun. This research post expands my class presentation on Sor Juana, mainly because I still had so many questions and a certain draw toward Sor Juana. How does a self-educated Mexican nun born in 1648 become an icon for women and why does Sor Juana have such a pull on modern readers?  

If a reader wanted to begin researching Sor Juana, I would recommend looking at Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz: Religion, Art, and Feminism by Pamela Kirk. This book presents Sor Juana’s personal life and focuses on her religious life and her religious works.  To get a larger picture of Sor Juana’s works, and to study the actual works, one of the most impressive online repositories is Dartmouth’s “The Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz Project,” which includes a large number of Sor Juana’s plays, poetry and prose.  Even with her modern message, most of the online research tends to impress upon the researcher that the teaching of Sor Juana in America is more recent, or at least gaining more steam in early American Literature during the last ten years.

Sor Juana's works are not just studied as texts, but Sor Juana herself is studied and even used as a Mexican archetype by Emily Hind in her book Femmenism and the Mexican Woman Intellectual from Sor Juana to Poniatowksa. The Sor Juana archetype is a "woman intellectual... a smart, gendered but sexually inactive woman who pursues knowledge and procreates only through art and not through genetic legacy" (Hind 34).  The fact that Sor Juana is seen as an archetype along with the Virgen de Guadalupe and La Malinche shows the importance of Sor Juana in Mexican Literature. If you want to look at Sor Juana in a larger scope than Mexican culture, in “Sor Juana’s ‘Silencio Sonoro’: Musical Responses to her Poetry” Emily Bergmann looks at current music about Sor Juana or influenced by Sor Juana, and also introduces a movie called I, the Worst of All by director Maria Luisa Bemberg in 1990.  Bergmann also states that two English novels by "Alicia Gaspar de Alba (Sor Juana’s Second Dream) and Paul Anderson (Hunger’s Brides and Breath of Heaven) have drawn upon extensive research to locate the poet’s embodied experience, imagination, and desire in the geography and politics of colonial New Spain” (Bergmann 180). Sor Juana’s influence reaches beyond poetry and prose, and beyond the seventeenth century and into music and film in the twenty first century.

The reason why Sor Juana is relevant to modern readers is because her subjects are so modern and her reactions to her status of being a woman were so public. As part of this research post, I came upon a theory about Sor Juana’s sexual orientation, that she was a lesbian or had lesbian tendencies. At first, I thought it was all general speculation over her decision to go into a convent and her relationship with her patroness  but I encountered several poems, websites, and even a movie that support this theory.  One website, "Isle of Lesbos" captured a handful of Sor Juana's poems that seemed to have tinges of Lesbian verses or ideas. This idea, whether founded or not, is interesting because of the modern relevance and the modern attachment to readers have given to a seventeenth-century nun.  

If I were to continue researching Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, I would like to explore more of the impact that she has on current literature, music and films. I am definitely going to watch the film I, the Worst of All because I would like to see how a modern director portrays Sor Juana. Sor Juana focuses on modern and progressive issues that are still relevant today, such as equality, women's education, and especially men's view of women.   

Resources:

Bergmann, Emilie. “Sor Juana’s ‘Silencio Sonoro:’ Musical Responses to her Poetry.” Cuad Musica Artes Visuales Artes Escenicas 4.1(2008): 177-206.

Hind, Emily. Femmenism and the Mexican Woman Intellectual from Sor Juana to Poniatowska. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Print.

Kirk, Pamela. Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz: Religion, Art, and Feminism. New York: Continuum, 1999.  Print.

http://www.mezzocammin.com/timeline/timeline.php?vol=timeline&iss=1600&cat=40&page=cruz: Websites for readers that offer general information about Sor Juana

http://www.sappho.com/poetry/j_ines.html: Lesbian related poems – pure speculation but interesting view of Sor Juana’s poetry