Who Was Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz? Mexico's \"Tenth Muse\" and Her Fight to Learn
A child prodigy who read Latin at three, became a nun to keep studying and defended women's right to learn: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz explained.
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648–1695) was a Mexican nun, poet, playwright, philosopher and composer of the Baroque age, and one of the most important women writers in the Spanish language. Born in colonial New Spain, she was called "The Tenth Muse" and "The Phoenix of America" by the critics of her own time, and today she is remembered above all for defending a woman's right to study.
A child prodigy in her grandfather's library
She was born Juana Inés de Asbaje y Ramírez de Santillana in San Miguel Nepantla, near Mexico City, a town that now carries her name. Her parents were not married, and two different baptism records, from 1648 and 1651, have been linked to her; scholars still debate the year. She grew up on her grandfather's hacienda, where she had free access to his library.
Reading was something girls were not supposed to do, so she hid in the hacienda chapel with her grandfather's books. By three she could read and write Latin, by five she could reportedly do accounts, at eight she wrote a poem on the Eucharist, and at thirteen she was teaching Latin to younger children. A famous story, told by her early biographers, says that when she failed to learn a lesson she cut off some of her own hair, because a head so bare of ideas did not deserve to be covered in beauty.
The girl who wanted to dress as a boy
In 1664, at about sixteen, she was sent to Mexico City. She asked her mother to let her disguise herself as a male student so that she could attend the university, which did not admit women. The answer was no, so she kept studying on her own.
Her family's position won her a place as a lady-in-waiting at the viceroy's court. The viceroy, the Marquis of Mancera, wanted to test the seventeen-year-old, so he invited theologians, jurists, philosophers and poets to question her. She had to answer without preparation and explain difficult points, and she impressed them all.
Why did Sor Juana become a nun?
The convent offered what marriage would not: time, books and a room for study. In 1667 she tried the strict Discalced Carmelites for a few months, and in 1669 she entered the Hieronymite order, which had more relaxed rules, taking the name Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.
She stayed in the Convent of Santa Paula in Mexico City from 1669 until her death. There she studied, wrote and gathered a large library. The viceroys became her patrons and had her work published in Spain, and the scholar Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora was a close friend who visited her at the convent.
Her most famous works
Her most ambitious poem is Primero sueño (First Dream), a long philosophical poem that opens as night falls and a sleeper sinks into silence. The Mexican writer Octavio Paz read it as a picture of the desire for knowledge itself. She also wrote comedies such as Los empeños de una casa and Amor es más laberinto, which premiered in 1689.
Her best-known poem today is the satirical Hombres necios (Foolish Men), written in the 1680s. It attacks the double standard of men who blame women for the very things they push them into, and it is considered one of the first proto-feminist works in the Americas. Not every scholar agrees with that label: the Mexican scholar Antonio Alatorre saw it rather as a moral attack on male hypocrisy, a theme with older precedents.
The letter that cost her everything
In November 1690 the bishop of Puebla published, without her permission, her critique of a forty-year-old sermon by a famous Portuguese Jesuit. He added a letter of his own, signed with the pen name "Sor Filotea", telling her to spend her time on religious instead of worldly studies.
Her answer, the Respuesta a Sor Filotea de la Cruz, is a defense of women's right to formal education and to be intellectual authorities who publish their own work. It is often read as the first great feminist text of the Americas.
Silence and death
The pressure grew. By 1693 she seems to have stopped writing, and in 1694 she was forced to sell her books and devote herself to charity for the poor. One penance document from that time is signed "Yo, la peor de todas", "I, the worst of all". She died on 17 April 1695, aged only 46, after caring for her sister nuns during an epidemic of plague. Sigüenza y Góngora gave the funeral eulogy.
Why she still matters
Sor Juana has been presented as a candidate for sainthood, a symbol of Mexican national identity, and a champion of free speech and women's rights. She is also on Mexican money: she appeared on the 1,000-peso bill from 1978, on 200-peso bills between 1994 and 2020, and on the current 100-peso bill since 2020. For Spanish learners she is a wonderful, challenging read: Baroque wordplay, sharp logic and a voice that still argues back three centuries later.
Learn with Sor Juana: English expressions
| Expression | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
| a thirst for knowledge | a strong wish to learn | Sor Juana had a thirst for knowledge. |
| self-taught | learned without a teacher | She was largely self-taught. |
| a double standard | a rule applied unfairly to different groups | Her poem attacks a double standard. |
| speak your mind | say what you really think | She spoke her mind in her famous letter. |
| ahead of her time | with ideas too modern for her era | Many readers see her as ahead of her time. |
Practice: Write three sentences about someone who fought to learn, using "a thirst for knowledge" and "speak your mind".