Welcome to 17th
century Mexico, where an upper class woman’s number one job was to stay inside
so that the men of the family could be sure she was a virgin and the family
honor was safe. Nothing more dangerous than female sexuality, you know – except
perhaps female intellect and curiosity.
You may
remember that in fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean
blue – and Europeans swiftly decimated native population of the Americas with disease
and slavery and Europeans (mostly Spanish and Portuguese) had colonized much of
Central and South America within a century. (Concerted European colonization of
North America didn’t start until the 17th century.)
In Spanish
America, the Spanish established a racially-based caste system which – despite
its problems – was more fluid than the race and class system later established
in North America, possibly because Spanish men in the early days of
colonization didn’t have as much of a problem with marrying indigenous women as
the British did. As you might expect, Europeans were at the top of the pecking
order, mixed race people were somewhere in the middle, and indigenous peoples
and African slaves were at the bottom. Women at the bottom of this caste system
– both free and slave – had to work to survive, and although this was certainly
not a glamorous lifestyle, some of these women had more freedom than their
upper class European counterparts. For upper class women, there was only one
alternative to marriage and family life that potentially offered more freedom:
the convent.
This brings
us to this week’s subject: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. John Charles Chasteen,
author of Born in Blood and Fire,
describes Sor Juana thusly:
At the age of seven, Juana had
made a surprising announcement. She wanted to attend the University of Mexico
(which had opened its doors in 1553, a century before Harvard). She offered to
dress as a boy, but it was hopeless. A university education was supposedly over
Juana’s head. Never mind that she had been reading since the age of three or
that she learned Latin just for fun. Forget that she stumped a jury of forty
university professors at the age of seventeen, or that Juana became known
throughout Mexico for her poetry. Like other women of her class, she had two
alternatives: marry and devote her energies to husband and children, or become
a nun.
Sor (Sister) Juana, as you may have
guessed, chose the convent so she could continue her studies. Sor Juana lived
from 1650(ish) and 1695 – during the so-called “Scientific Revolution” and on
the cusp of the “Age of Enlightenment.” She lived during a time when Europeans –
particularly Europeans outside of monastic life – were learning about and
expanding on several centuries worth of scientific and mathematic discoveries
developed in the Muslim Empires of the Middle East and North Africa during
Western Europe’s “Dark Ages.”
During the Medieval period, knowledge
was controlled and distributed in Europe by the Catholic Church. Knowledge is
power, and all knowledge came from the church. To some extent, the essential
conflict of Europe from the 16th to 18th centuries was a
power struggle between the Catholic Church and its allies, versus those who
challenged the authority and power of Rome for any number of reasons.
Because Spain was an unwavering
member of Europe’s Catholic bloc, Sor Juana’s colonial Mexico was also ruled by
the Church, and even though she was a nun, she still managed to get on the
Church’s bad side.
Juana Inés de la Cruz may have been
destined for a scandalous life, being that she was born out of wedlock to a
Spanish father and Creole (American-born of European heritage) mother. Young
Juana’s superior intellect was obvious early on and so her mother sent her to
Mexico City where wealthier relatives could foster her education. Juana became
infamous for her intelligence – and was apparently quite beautiful – but
rejected several suitors in favor of convent life so she could continue her
studies.
During most of the two decades that
she spent in the Convent of the Order of St. Jerome, she was allowed to
aggressively pursue her passions, becoming a great and celebrated mind of her
age. She studied mathematics, and music, creating her own form of musical notation.
She collected books, amassing an enormous library. She gathered scientific
instruments, and studied the new sciences. She studied languages: not just
Latin, but also Nahuatal, the language of the Mexica (often erroneously called
the “Aztecs”). But, she was probably best known for her poetry, some of it
romantic (celebrating her patroness Countess de Pareda), some of it acerbic
criticism of gender norms. She famously accused men in her poem, “Hombres
Necios” (Foolish Men) of projecting their own illogical and passionate
tendencies on women whom, Juana argued, were actually the more reasonable sex.
(What a babe.)
While the Church did not
necessarily sanction her voracious appetite for knowledge or her condemnation
of men, neither are what ultimately got her into trouble. In 1690, she critiqued
a sermon by a well-known Jesuit priest. Her critique was published – possibly
by the Bishop of Mexico – along with a critique by an imaginary nun “Sor
Filotea” who condemned Sor Juana for un-womanly intellectualism. Sor Juana took
the bait and in her “Reply to Sor Filotea,” she publicly criticized the church
for denying women access to education, arguing not only that women’s education
could be devotional in the service of God, but also that women had a right to education. This was the last
straw for the Church, and Sor Juana was censured. The Church banned her
previously published work and barred her from publishing anything new. She was
pressured into giving away her library and instruments – which she duly did.
Based on what we know of Sor Juana,
I would guess that the last few years of her life were pretty miserable, but
maybe she found solace in prayer, and maybe she continued her studies, if less
robustly than before. Regardless, she only lived another five years after her
censure. In 1695, a bout of plague swept through the convent, and Sor Juana
caught it while caring for her ill sisters.
What Sor Juana’s story demonstrates
is that patriarchal societies are afraid not only of female sexuality, but also
female intelligence and curiosity. Western creation myths – Pandora and the
box, Eve and the apple – suggest that women are innately more curious than men,
and being too curious for their own good leads to disobedience and disaster for
both sexes. The moral of the story is to stamp all knowledge with a warning label:
Keep Out of Reach of Women.
As icky as patriarchal fear of
female sexuality is, it kind of makes sense – if you apply the internal logic
of patrilineal society to it. In societies where there is property to be had,
and where property is passed down the male line, male property holders want to
be assured of the paternity of their children: ergo, seclude the women. Controlling
women’s access to education and curtailing curiosity, is a way to control
women’s movements, and therefore, their sex lives – thus leading to the many
stereotypes that follow our girls to school each day, haunting them in their
STEM classes, and making them more likely to be written up for dress code
violations that “distract” their male peers.
Q.E.D., bitches.
Sources:
Born
in Blood and Fire: A Concise History of Latin America, John Charles
Chasteen
My
Favorite Feminist: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Dahlia Grossman-Heinze, Ms.
Magazine Blog, March 16, 2011.
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