A Woman of Genius: The Intellectual Autobiography of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

by Juana Inés de la Cruz, Margaret Sayers Peden (Translator), Gabriel N. Seymour (Photographer)

This book, published in an English/Spanish bilingual format, reproduces the complete text of what has become one of the classic works of Spanish American literature. Well known as a poet during her lifetime, the nun's bold confrontation with high church authority, followed shortly by her death during an epidemic while tending to her sister nuns, has made her one of the folk heroes of Latin America.

Genres: Feminism, Poetry, Memoir, Female Authors, Religion, Christianity, Classics

104 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1982

About the author

Juana Inés de la Cruz was born in a town in the Valley of Mexico to a Creole mother Isabel Ramírez and a Spanish military father, Pedro Manuel de Asbaje. As a child, she learned Nahuatl (Uto-Aztec language spoken in Mexico and Central America) and read and write Spanish in the middle of three years. Thanks to her grandfather's lush library, Juana Inés de la Cruz read the Greek and Roman classics and the theology of the time, she learned Latin in a self-taught way. In 1665, admired for her talent and precocity, she was lady-in-waiting to Leonor Carreto, wife of Viceroy Antonio Sebastián de Toledo. Sponsored by the Marquises of Mancera, she shone in the viceregal court of New Spain for her erudition and versifying ability. In 1667, Juana Inés de la Cruz entered a convent of the Discalced Carmelites of Mexico but soon had to leave due to health problems. Two years later she entered the Order of St. Jerome, remaining there for the rest of her life and being visited by the most illustrious personalities of the time. She had several drawbacks to her activity as a writer, a fact that was frowned upon at the time and that Juana Inés de la Cruz always defended, claiming the right of women to learn. Shortly before her death, she was forced by her confessor to get rid of her library and her collection of musical and scientific instruments so as not to have problems with the Holy Inquisition, very active at that time. She died of a cholera epidemic at the age of forty-three, while helping her sick companions. The emergence of Sor Juana De La Cruz in the late seventeenth century was a cultural miracle and her whole life was a constant effort of stubborn personal and intellectual improvement.

Reviews

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't remember how I learned about this book, though a friend of mine (feminist, poet) recommended Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz to me. During the 1990s my friend was traveling in Mexico where a feminist journalist introduced her to the woman's poetry.

Sor Juana was one of those females who could read by the age of three, who had an unquenchable urge to read and learn. She entered a convent to escape any need to marry and there she wrote poems, plays, essays, and religious commentary on the Scriptures. In 1690, she wrote a critique of a 40 year old sermon by a famed Portuguese Jesuit priest. A bishop in her own time had it published which led to a suggestion that Sor Juana give up any and all studies and reading except Scripture.

The contents a A Woman of Genius is her answer to such a suggestion. It is a major declaration of women's intellectual freedom. Her confrontation with high Church authority resulted in her posthumous status as a folklore heroine of Latin America.

This was not an easy read. I took it 5 pages at a time, meaning 8 days of close concentration to read 63 pages of the translator's introduction and the author's words. Sor Juana's sentences and her wide, deep knowledge rival Jorge Luis Borges. Her ideas about women's place in the Church and in life, however, are as exciting and inspirational as any of the best feminist writing I have read. She balances her temerity with sometimes genuine, sometimes ironic humility.

As women, we all have experienced having a man in some position of power seek to cancel, defeat or obstruct us in our endeavors. The worst ones are when such an abuse of power threatens our security, position and/or reputation. It is a very hard battle to win, up to this very day.

While reading Sor Juana's words, every one of my experiences with such discouraging treatment floated back to me. But it seemed I was liberated from any lasting regret or weakness I still carried. Possibly some of the best therapy ever. Since I got the book from my library, it cost me nothing but about 8 hours of my time.

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title is, incredible as it may seem, truth in advertising. And, with apologies to Dave Eggers, this is the real heartbreaking work of staggering genius. The genius belonged to a nun in what was then New Spain at the end of the seventeenth century. In this book, less an autobiography than a passionate defense of learning, especially for women, Sor Juana was responding to an anonymous criticism that she must have known was written and ordered published from on high: the Bishop of Puebla. (Her own Archbishop of Mexico City seems to have been a cleric of little learning and an obsessive fear of women). She marshaled her evidence for her arguments from the Christian and the Classical traditions, demonstrating an intimate familiarity with both. (As a teenager, she had outdebated the foremost intellectuals of the colony in a forum arranged by the Viceroy). But she clearly was hurt and felt threatened: the most moving passages are those in which she speaks of how studying, writing (including poetry) and even making scientific experiments is what comes naturally to her--today we would call it a need, even a compulsion. The prose is clear and strong, especially coming from one of the most skilled practitioners of the Spanish Baroque, which can seem so needlessly intricate and self-referential. And this is the heartbreaking part: she had a mind that was clearly one of the most gifted and inquisitive of her time, trapped in the distant colony of a European power busily wasting its financial and intellectual capital, and hostage to a church that questioned her right to think and to express her thoughts. Sor Juana's little book is the argument of a mind that knows itself more powerful than the forces that threaten it, always learned, at times playful, at times forceful, often wounded or angry, but always at least a little sad. She may have been right about her need for intellectual study and discourse. Her pen was largely silenced; she died four years later, nursing other nuns during a plague. The book at hand was published after her death, in Spain.

[Meghan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz’s poignant and illustrative Reply to Sor Filotea de la Cruz, I am baffled that yet so little is known and read in the English-speaking world of the poet-feminist-theologian whose image appears on the Mexican 200 peso note. Never straying from a tone of deep humility and respect, her letter scrutinizes each underlying premise of her addressee’s suggestion that she focus her attention on religious matters, rather than on the publication of literary and critical works. With artful impunity, she calls into question the doctrinarism of her critic and goes so far as to implicitly compare her intellectual persecution to the persecution of Christ at the hands of his accusers.

The eloquent veracity of Sor Juana’s argument in regards to the value of secular studies for the benefice of achieving a broader and truer understanding of Biblical teachings draws me to wonder that her work is not required reading at all private Christian universities, Spanish-speaking or otherwise. When viewed from the context that its author was a self-educated seventeenth-century nun in Mexico City, the progressive and profound content of the letter is nothing short of astounding. Humbly she persuades her reader that her desire to read and learn and instruct is a trait that can be neither condemned nor praised, because it is as natural to her as the desire to live. Plainly she reiterates that any recognition that she receives on account of her writings is merely the result of an undeniable passion that God himself has instilled in her. Masterfully demonstrating the depth of her knowledge of the Bible and other Classical and religious writings, she tears down the notion that her inclination to pursue this passion should be denied merely on the grounds of her sex. Sor Juana’s prose are immensely enjoyable and Margaret Peden’s translation is beautiful, making this a book that is altogether impossible to pass up.

[Cat {Pemberley and Beyond} · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading Sor Juana's 'Respuesta' blew my mind. She's intelligent, knows how to manipulate language and how to structure an argument. Despite this, I felt so much rage at how she was treated by her contemporaries.

Am considering buying a copy so that I can have it in my book collection to re-read at a later date.

[Michele · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Heroine's Mythic Journey: A revolutionary genius of feminism.
Does she achieve the highest goal, Imitatio Christi?

[DC · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bastante interesante - me gustaria ver una conversación, o algunos poemas, novelas, or oraciones escritas - entre Sor Juana y Jane Austen. Aunque no fueron contemporáneas, me parece que tienen unas ideas en común, y estilos semejantes.