Sor (Sister) Juana Inés de la Cruz

• 1651-1695 Her original name  Juana Ramírez de Asbaje   poet, dramatist, scholar, and nun, an outstanding writer of the Latin American colonial period and of the Hispanic Baroque. Lived in Mexico City.

A small excerpt from “Reply to Sor Philothea:”

      Oh, how much harm would be avoided in our country if older women were as learned as Laeta and knew how to teach in the way Saint Paul and my Father Saint Jerome direct! Instead of which, if fathers wish to educate their daughters beyond what is customary, for want of trained older women and on account of the extreme negligence

which has become women's sad lit, since well-educated older women are unavailable, they are obliged to bring in men teachers to give instruction in reading, writing, and arithmetic, playing musical instruments, and other skills. No little harm is done by this, as we witness every day in the pitiful examples of ill-assorted unions; from the ease of contact and the close company kept over a period of time, there easily comes about something not thought possible. As a result of this, many fathers prefer leaving their daughters in a barbaric, uncivilized

state to exposing them to an evident danger such as familiarity with men breeds. All of which would be eliminated if there were older women of learning, as Saint Paul desires, and instruction were passed down from one group to another, as in the case with needlework and other traditional activities.

Silly, you men--so very adeptat wrongly faulting womankind,not seeing you're alone to blamefor faults you plant in woman's mind. After you've won by urgent pleathe right to tarnish her good name,you still expect her to behave--you, that coaxed her into shame. You batter her resistance downand then, all righteousness, proclaimthat feminine frivolity,not your persistence, is to blame.

When it comes to bravely posturing,

your witlessness must take the prize:

you're the child that makes a bogeyman,

and then recoils in fear and cries.

Presumptuous beyond belief,

you'd have the woman you pursue

be Thais when you're courting her,

Lucretia once she falls to you.

For plain default of common sense,

could any action be so queer

as oneself to cloud the mirror,

then complain that it's not clear?