A Most Intelligent Nun

Hello! In this blog, we will be talking about an amazing, miraculous woman who I had previously not known. This fact surprised me seeing as she is such a miraculous woman. I hope this blog will enlighten you as learning about her did for me.

Juana Inés de Asbaje y Ramírez is considered the first feminist in the Americas. An amazing woman who spent her life devoted to knowledge.

She was born in the 17th century in Mexico. Mexico had been a Spanish colony for a century leading to a complex class system.

Juana’s maternal grandparents were born in Spain, which gave them good social standing but she was born out of wedlock to a Spanish military captain and Dona Isabel (her mother). The captain left Doña Isabel and she was forced to take care of Juana and her two sisters alone. Fortunately, because of grandparents, good social standing, and money they were able to live a comfortable life.

Her mother set a great example by fantastically managing one of her grandfather's two estates despite her illiteracy and a great deal of sexism. This probably inspired Juana. In fact, at age 3 she followed her older sister to school, and when she found out that higher education was only allowed to men, she begged her mother to allow her to attend in disguise. When her mother refused, she found comfort in her grandfather’s private library. Her need for knowledge was so great that by the time she was a tween she had mastered philosophical debate, Latin, and the Aztec language Nawa. This attracted attention from the royal court in Mexico City. The viceroy and his wife took her in as their lady in waiting, but first they wanted to check her knowledge so they gathered together philosophers and mathematicians, basically all the smartest people they could find around to ask Juana the hardest questions they knew, but despite their attempts to baffle her, she answered every question correctly. Later the event was described as a royal galleon, as if Juana was fending off a few rowing boats. Evidently she would be allowed as the lady in waiting where her poems and plays danced between dazzling and enraging the court where many found her infamous poem “Foolish Men” irritating. In this poem she chided men for using sexest double standards, talking about how men corrupt women and then criticizing them of immorality.

Here is the poem

Foolish men

Who lay

the guilt on women,

not seeing you’re the cause

of the very thing you blame;

if you invite their disdain

with measureless desire

why wish they well behave

if you incite to ill.

You fight their stubbornness,

then, weightily,

you say it was their lightness

when it was your guile.

In all your crazy shows

you act just like a child

who plays the bogeyman

of which he’s then afraid.

With foolish arrogance

you hope to find a Thais

in her you court, but a Lucretia

when you’ve possessed her.

What kind of mind is odder

than his who mists

a mirror and then complains

that it’s not clear.

Their favour and disdain

you hold in equal state,

if they mistreat, you complain,

you mock if they treat you well.

No woman wins esteem of you:

the most modest is ungrateful

if she refuses to admit you;

yet if she does, she’s loose.

You always are so foolish

your censure is unfair;

one you blame for cruelty

the other for being easy.

What must be her temper

who offends when she’s

ungrateful and wearies

when compliant?

But with the anger and the grief

that your pleasure tells

good luck to her who doesn’t love you

and you go on and complain.

Your lover’s moans give wings

to women’s liberty:

and having made them bad,

you want to find them good.

Who has embraced

the greater blame in passion?

She who, solicited, falls,

or he who, fallen, pleads?

Who is more to blame,

though either should do wrong?

She who sins for pay

or he who pays to sin?

Why be outraged at the guilt

that is of your own doing?

Have them as you make them

or make them what you will.

Leave off your wooing

and then, with greater cause,

you can blame the passion

of her who comes to court?

Patent is your arrogance

that fights with many weapons

since in promise and insistence

you join world, flesh and devil.

Despite her outspokenness, however, she still inspired high regard and many marriage proposals. She valued knowledge over marriage so to maintain her standards she entered the church and became a nun. Here she could keep her respectability and independence while still remaining unmarried. hen she was 20 she entered the harem, a convent in Santa Paula. This is when she changed her name to Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. She was considered a valuable asset to the church. She wrote dramas, comedies, and plays, As well as treatises on philosophy and mathematics. Not to mention religious music.

Sor Juana accrued a massive library and many learned scholars visited her.

While doing all of this, she was acting as the convent archivist and treasurer, and she protected her sisters and nieces from men who wanted to exploit them. She was truly a woman who was doing it all. But all of this got her into conflict with her benefactors.

In 1690, a priest published Sor Juana’s private critique of a respected sermon. In it he told her to devote herself to prayer rather than debate. Sor Juana rebutted that God would have not given women intellect if he did not like them to use it. This letter is considered the first feminist manifesto.

This caught the attention of the archbishop of Mexico. Slowly she was stripped of her prestige, forced to sell her books and quit writing. Angry at this but not wanting to leave the church she renewed her vows, and with her last act of defiance, signed them in her own blood with the words, “l the worst of all.”

After this, she threw herself into charity work, and when nursing one of her sisters, she contracted an illness and died.

She was 47.

Today she can be seen on Mexico‘s 200 peso bill.

I hope you enjoyed the brilliant, magnificent and wonderful story of Sor Juana lnés de la Cruz as much as I did, and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day!

Thank you to

History's "worst" nun by Theresa A. Yugar

A Ted Ed talk for the bulk of my information

Hispanic Heritage Student Contest: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

By Flocabulary

And of course, thank you to you for reading this