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- [00:01]
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- [00:36]
Podcast Host (History Extra)
Welcome to the History Extra podcast. She led a life that really in many ways shouldn't have been possible. So says historian Paul Gillingham on so Juana Ines de la Cruz. This 17th century polymathan nun challenged conventions in so many ways, earning through her extraordinary books and poems, a place in the pantheon of great Mexican literary figures and directing more than a few barbs at the patriarchy along the way. Here in conversation with Spencer Mizzen, Paul discusses the life of a woman he describes as the Spanish Shakespeare.
- [01:12]
Interviewer (Spencer Mizzen)
So, Paul, we're here today to talk about the life of Sorgiana Inez de la Cruz, a Mexican poet, dramatist, scholar and nun who lived in the second half of the 17th century. Now, my guess is that a lot of our listeners won't know a lot about her, so I wonder if you could begin by giving us a quick introduction to this remarkable woman who was so Juana Ines de la Cruz in a nutshell.
- [01:40]
Historian Paul Gillingham
So she was born in central Mexico, just underneath the volcano, but Popocatepetl, next to Mexico city in either 1648 or 1651. We're not sure. Her mother was the owner or the family of an hacienda, so a large estate. Her father, depends which variant you take, was a Spanish rogue who got Dona Isabel, her mother, pregnant not once but three times, but then disappeared each time. And so you have in Sor Juana, a child of privilege, but she's Spanish, born in Mexico, which makes her a creole, a second class citizen, and she's illegitimate. And you might think that this would be totally disabling socially in a culture of honour, a culture that's formally structured along the lines of race. But it's not at all, and it's not at all for three reasons. First of all, she's extremely intelligent and and driven. Secondly, she's a beauty. And third, she's well enough connected to where as a teenager she can be sent from this very small village, it's still a couple of thousand people, into the heart of the world's greatest metropolis, Mexico City. And there she joins the court. She becomes part of the entourage of the vice reiner and lives there for the rest of her life. But aged 16 or 17, she decides that being an ornament of the court isn't all it's cracked up to be, and decides that not ever wanting to marry and not wanting to be fluttering around an endless cocktail party, which is what the vice regal court is, she takes vows as a nun and she goes first of all to a rather austere monastery called the Monastery of Santa Paula, where she leaves one of her many really snarkier sides to the extent of the abbess's wisdom and commitment to learning and religion. She's not impressed. And so after a few months, six months maybe, she opts for cloistered life as a nun in the convent of Saint Geronimo. And the continent of Saint Geronimo is a much, much more interesting place. In anachronistic terms, it's much more liberal. And it allows her to have an apartment, to build a large library, to gather scientific instruments like telescopes, astrolabes, and to form what really is a sort of literary salon avant la lett, in this apartment, in this convent where she holds court as the main intellectual of her time until 1695 when she dies. So she has a 20 plus year career as the leading intellectual of New Spain, and people would argue Spain itself.
- [04:29]
Interviewer (Spencer Mizzen)
So tell us then, if you would, Paul, a little bit about the world she lived in. What was New Spain like in the second half of the 17th century, especially for a woman, especially for a woman with her intellectual capabilities?
- [04:45]
Historian Paul Gillingham
Well, it's traditionally seen as quite authoritarian, segregated very strongly into men and women's spheres of power, what they could and couldn't do. And that is quite true, but we can't trace very convincingly how much power everyday women had, because we just see once in a while they come into the record, and sometimes they come into the record for really interesting reasons, like female bandits. And there's several great examples of those. Sometimes they come in, in the law records because they've been spectacularly publicly rude to a bureaucrat, or in Sor Juana's case, she comes in because she is an exceptional writer and an exceptional writer with the contacts every writer needs to get published, to hold forth and to be respected, digested, listened to. So women's role in the new world is formally one where an old culture of honour keeps them very controlled, very submissive, even sort of confined to their houses. But at the same time, there's wiggle room. And there's wiggle room for two classes. And one is the poor, because the poorer you get the there isn't a house to be confined to and the family needs you to go out and make some money. So the poor women have actually, ironically, more freedom than the richer. But then among the richer, there are these occasional quite exceptional characters, whether they be noble women or whether they be, in Sor Juana's case, a woman from really next to nowhere who becomes the foremost intellectual and the most visible woman really of her age.
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Interviewer (Spencer Mizzen)
So, as you said earlier, Sor Juana was born out of wedlock to a family of modest means. What was her early life like? Can you tell us a little bit about that, please?
- [06:38]
Historian Paul Gillingham
Well, there's lots of really good reasons to enjoy studying Sor Juana, which I hope we'll have time to get into. One of them is I just said that women don't crop up in the historical record. Sor Juana is a major exception, not just because of whom she becomes, but because she leaves behind an autobiography. And so we actually know far more about her early life than the huge majority of women in the Spanish speaking world, the 17th century. So we know that from the start she is absolutely obsessed with books and learning. And so she very early on says, I decided not to eat cheese because I was told that cheese made one stupid. With time, her grip of science means she does go back to cheese because she sees that it actually doesn't. But she starts off very young, aged three, and she's extremely lucky because her mother believes in education, her grandfather has a significant library, and there is actually once again challenging our preconceptions of what the vice regal world was. There was a primary school for girls nearby, and so age 3, she can read. She follows her elder sister to school, plays hooky, but from home, not school, and starts learning there. And she's quick enough between that, her mother, her library, to where, age 6, she says, I found out there was a university in Mexico City. And I said to my mum, look, if I cut my hair short and dress up as a boy, can I go to school and then university? And her mother says, no, sorry, that option's not on the table. She does, though, cut her hair, but she doesn't cut her hair so that she can pass as a boy. She cuts her hair as this fantastic incentive to actually learn her Latin, because she's already moving beyond the confines of Spanish to Latin, Greek and the indigenous language Nahuatl of her area. And so to learn Latin, she Says every time I get a grammar lesson wrong, I will cut off a chunk of my hair. And the reason I will do this is it's a great incentive to actually get your grammar right. And it is better to be ornamented inside than outside your head.
- [08:52]
Interviewer (Spencer Mizzen)
What kind of person was she? What if people who crossed her path sort of write about her? What impression did she make on them?
- [09:00]
Historian Paul Gillingham
Oh, she was utterly captivating. And she was captivating because she was using the word carefully. A polymath. She knew as close as anybody could to a time, everything. Obviously this had been impossible for several hundred years, but in the 1680s and 70s you could come pretty close if you read voraciously, had the library, had the memory and the drive and the intelligence. And so her intelligence captivated people, her looks captivated people. There's a wonderful painting of her in her library which really captures so much. So you have to imagine there's this very self possessed looking woman in the robes of a nun looking directly at the painter. And she's got a globe, she's got, I think a telescope, she's got what they called her scientific instruments foreground and then background there is just a wall of books. It's like when a professor TR to look seriously, professionally, you know, you've got your leather bound tomes, she's got that and there's this wonderful calm look of somebody who is utterly self possessed. And the final thing which is beautiful about that picture is not how much it tells us about her life and her charisma, but also again about her society. Because it's painted by the greatest painter of her day, a man called Miguel Cabrera. And Miguel Cabrera happens to be pure Zapotec, indigenous. And so you have this coming together of what on cheap preconceptions should never have happened. Incredibly powerful woman and an incredibly powerful indigenous painter.
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Interviewer (Spencer Mizzen)
And can you tell us a little bit more about her life between leaving home and becoming a nun?
- [10:39]
Historian Paul Gillingham
Well, she attained social mobility by becoming very close to three viceroyens. And this is the absolute social and political centre of Vice regal Mexico. The name would indicate the viceroy is the vice king. He has the divine and temporal power that a king would have. He is the king's doppelganger. And it's so far away, sort of six months away to get to and back from Spain. They have extraordinary independence until the end when they get audited. It's wonderful. They can do what they want for five years. Then in the sixth year of their term they get audited and life gets interesting for almost all of them, meanwhile, though, they are absolutely central to the social life of New Spain. And their wives, of course are aristocrats and they reign greatly. Their courts are the social center and many of them are clearly quite bored by it. And you can read very much between the lines, this sort of bored wealthy intellect. And Sor Juana has the luck to come across three of these, all of whom take her to heart. And she starts off in the 1660 with the Marquise de Mansera, who is actually Italian. And so again, you've got this different world. And then the last one is the incredibly important Maria Luisa Gonzaga, who's the Marquesa de Laguna. And she turns up in 1680. So Juana is 30 real peak for power. And so Juana writes an ode for the arrival of the viceroys. And the arrival of the viceroys is a week long parade up the mountain from the main port, Veracruz, through the mountains, stopping at city after city until they get to Mexico City. And it's unbelievably choreographed things like the parade through even medium sized towns. They're carefully organized, they're sort of following group of worthies by their order of social importance. And so you have these and you have a specially made book and you have triumphal arches which they go under. And it really makes sense of how Sor Juana captivated this key figure in her life, the Marquisa de Laguna, when you see that her designed arch was the second that this new viceroy came to, and her verse about it was the first in the ceremonial book. And so the greatest Mexican intellectual of his age, who was a man, wrote a preface to this book saying, you know what, I would have loved to have been at the top of this book. But actually there's this woman, she's a nun, Sor Juana, and she really should go first because she is the brightest light we have. And so there's this entire extraordinary sort of CV acted out before Romaquisa arrives, and then she's left there. As I say, you keep imagining, bored to tears. I don't think it's projecting too much from our time. And so she joins this literary salon of Sor Juana and this is the final sort of consecration. And she has Sor Juana's works published in Madrid, some of them stay in print for 30 years, which is a record which is know my peers and I would aspire to, but we ain't going to get it. And so that's the sort of final step from meritocratically won fame to this backing by an extremely powerful patroness. And this means across the 1680s in particular, it's the peak of her writing. She can't do whatever she wants, but she can come very close to it.
- [14:19]
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- [15:09]
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Interviewer (Spencer Mizzen)
So tell us a bit about her decision to become a nun. What drove that? And how did being a nun impact on her literary output?
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Historian Paul Gillingham
She decided to become a nun and she says in this wonderful autobiography, because I had no intention of marrying and as a nun I would be able to study and think and write. And of course, this might sound slightly extraordinary that a nun would have such freedom, but sort of nuns, for centuries, millennia, even going back to the 6th century, at least as far as I know, nuns are actually really quite powerful and can be independent depending on which institution they're in. And in New Spain, a lot of them, they become nun either because their parents don't have the money for a suitable dowry or because they take one look at the alternatives of married life and think, well, no thanks, that looks extremely tedious. And so you get these quite, I hesitate to use the word fun, but I don't at all. You get these quite fun convents. Nuns are obsessed, among other things, with theatre and so they love putting on am Dram. They read a lot. As I say, they can have quite strong contacts with the outer world depending on which nunnery they're in. And so it's nothing like Our preconception of this very cloistered life.
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Interviewer (Spencer Mizzen)
And for a nun, her writer could be quite baldy and ribald, couldn't it? Can you tell us a little bit about that, please?
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Historian Paul Gillingham
Yeah, certainly. First of all, she wrote more or less every genre you can imagine. And so she wrote nativity plays, she wrote theological essays, she wrote what we might call protonationalist, even plays. There's this fantastic one called the Divine Narcissus where we're in the 1680s and you have three characters. One represents America, one religion and one zeal. Then there's poetry. And then, as you say, you go through love sonnets and sort of, with increasing eyebrow raising levels of insinuation, thematic sort of precision through a series of love sonnets. We're in the same sort of register as Shakespearean sonnets. And these are very, very straightforward declarations of ardent love. And then, as you point out, there's a poem which, well, there's five, which it almost sounds as though she wrote for a bet and which are straightforwardly bawdy. And so quickly, to quote, because I thought you might possibly ask this, there's one which ends up. And it's. So I say, ines, to one thing I aspire that your love and my good wine will draw you hither and to tumble you to bed. I can conspire, okay, not quite living up to my preconception of a nun. And this is where you get part of the strong fascination with her is the prurient one. This is very Sapphic. And so one of the questions has always been, you know, is this courtly love? And they're directed towards her patrons, especially her patroness, the Marquis de Laguna. Is this courtly love or is this straightforwardly Sapphic? And when you look at the contents of this, you think, think, good grief. But there is, first of all, her background in that she was a member of a fairly not loose living. But it's an aristocratic court and, you know, these places can at times be quite, you know, sexually explicit, etc. And so having gone from that background into the church, it's a bit like anybody who's ever looked at the Anglo Saxons listening. There's St. Cuthbert of the 7th century and St Cuthbert is great. He's known for his asceticism, but he lived as a sort of aristocrat warrior beforehand. And with this in mind, reading between the lines, you see that he's sort of haunted his entire life by fears that the sort of love of money and women will come back to him. So Jur Juana's not quite like that. Sor Juana we can recognize, I think, in this trope from the last century whereby a woman who is independent avoids men and is intelligent and feminist, clearly they're gay. Absolutely. So there's this trope which you can't really know. And what you can know, though, is the real fascination of her feminist or proto feminist writing, which are absolutely revolutionary. And even if, as I've just argued, the context for women is far broader than what we traditionally thought, there is this culture of honor, there is this control of the upper classes, but then there's so much more. Even in that, Sor Juana stands out. She is choosing words carefully. Revolutionary. And she's revolutionary because over and over again she treats three themes. And one is men's domination of women. And not just the fact that it's unjust, but she used her erudition to prove that it's illogical, it's coldly irrational, and this is gripping. And then secondly, she says, and women, they're not just victims of this, or on the other hand, saints, they are absolutely capable of just being thinkers, functioning at the same level as very educated men. And she gives these extraordinary catalogues of extraordinary women across the ages. And then last of all, at the center of this, that women have the ability to read, learn, write and debate, and that it's illogical not to respect that.
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Interviewer (Spencer Mizzen)
But surely these writers must have earned her some powerful enemies. I mean, can you tell us a bit about the people who disapproved of her writings and how their opposition impacted on her later life?
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Historian Paul Gillingham
Absolutely. So what she writes is always controversial, but at her peak, when the intellectual establishment is clearly calling her things like the 10th muse, the Mexican Phoenix, and she's very publicly the greatest intellectual of her time, she can get away with it. And she can get away with it also because she is backed by this all powerful in the arts patroness. And the patroness leaves. And sor Juana in 1890, writes a private letter, one of her theological essays, to the conservative Bishop of Puebla, Manuel Menendez Santa Cruz. And it's not for publication and it's her discussing the way we might, in an email to a colleague, her thoughts on a 40 year old sermon by a Portuguese Jesuit, Fra Antonio de Viera, as to whether women should just be quiet about religion or not. Now, this is something she feels quite strongly about. She writes what's supposed to be a private letter and the bishop betrays her because he takes it and he publishes it, and he publishes it along with his commentary, which summed up into one sentence, says, you should stop thinking, reading and talking about anything apart from religion. This then is the catalyst for her autobiography and her greatest feminist work, because she writes a public reply called Repuesta sor filatea. One of the strange things about this is that the bishop releases his criticism of her in the guise of another nun. So there's all sorts of really interesting things to do with gender going on here and everybody knows the story. So she writes back this lengthy defense of women's rights to read, think, learn, publish, debate called the answer to Sister Filotea. And it's an exceptional piece of work that doesn't work because the next two years she spends fighting a rear guard action. And then in the end she sort of abjures her life as an intellectual. Her library is sold. She returns to the everyday life of a nun, of a sort of a non literary nun. The regular prayers, the many, many chores. And during one of them there's an epidemic of the plague in 1695 and she is nursing some of the victims and gets herself and dies aged 44.
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Interviewer (Spencer Mizzen)
So this is a really sad end to what was like a glittering literary career.
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Historian Paul Gillingham
Yes, it is made for tragedy and in fact it's been made into a soap oper. It's been made into a sadly fairly mediocre film with a great Spanish actress, Sunta Serna, which is really playing up the sapphic angle. She's the subject of Nobel Prize winner Octavio Paz's by far greatest essay, at least to my mind, which is all about her, her meaning, who she was as a person. So it is the final piece in a tragedy of a life that really in many ways should not have been possible. The fact that it was tells us an awful lot about Mexico.
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Interviewer (Spencer Mizzen)
And how is she remembered in Mexico today?
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Historian Paul Gillingham
In Mexico, she's on the hundred peso banknote. She's, I say, the subject of Octavio Paz's greatest essay. She's in popular culture, very revealingly for the phrase, it runs more or less mothers to daughters. Watch your tongue because you don't want to end up like Sor Juana. And so it runs the entire gamut. And I think really echoing her tongue from acknowledgement of women's need to struggle to be heard and straightforward admiration of her many qualities.
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Interviewer (Spencer Mizzen)
And what would you say is her greatest legacy today?
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Historian Paul Gillingham
I was having lunch with a novelist last Monday and said, oh, it's great. I'm going to have maybe half an hour to talk about Sor Juama and He said, ah, it's fantastic. There's these jokes, there's this sophistication. He said, she is at one end of a bridge in Spanish literature, she's beginning of it in Mexican literature, Latin American, and at the other end you've got this Ruben da Rio, great 19th century intellectual. So there's not much underneath that bridge. And so she is seen as the last great writer of the Spanish Ciglo de Oro, the Golden Age. And she is seen as, in her own right, a great poet. And then finally, she really squares with the need of our time, which is to think very carefully and critically about women's roles and look back to a nun in the 1680s who is writing very straightforward criticisms of men, defences of women, all wrapped in a prose or poetry, which in itself demonstrates her point.
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Interviewer (Spencer Mizzen)
And finally, Paul, if our listeners were to engage with, say, three of Sor Juana's works, which would you recommend?
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Historian Paul Gillingham
Oh, that's such a good question. First of all, the good news is that this is Baroque Spanish. It's extremely difficult to translate, and so you've had her thought coming through for decades and decades. But the real power of her poetry is difficult to get because you can either sort of straitjack it into the rhyming structure which is so key, but then it sounds really forced, like the bit I quoted earlier, or you can have the abilities of a genuinely great translator. And a decade ago, Edith Grossman, who translated all of Garcia Marquez, who has a feeling for this, which is just exceptional, she translated it. So the three things to look for. One is more or less any of the love sonnets. This is really a Spanish Shakespeare. Secondly is her main feminist poem, which is called Directed to Foolish or Mulish Men. And this is just so straightforward to give you just one of the points. Her argument is that women are criticized for sins that men are praised for and initiate, I. E. Womanizing. And so it's very well written, it's very clear. It's got things like who sins most, the man who pays or the woman who is paid. And you really get the idea there. Then the final thing is this autobiography contained in her desperate defence for life, the response to Sor philotea. The first 30 pages of that, particularly. Here you have what her life is about in her own words, and you really can't get better than that for either men or women from 350 years ago.
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Interviewer (Spencer Mizzen)
Oh, thank you so much for that. That was absolutely fascinating. That was.
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Podcast Host (History Extra)
Was Paul Gillingham speaking to Spencer Mizzen. Paul is professor of history at Northwestern University, Illinois. His new book, which features so Juana Inez de la Cruz, is a history. If you'd like to learn more about the people who have shaped Mexico over the past 500 years, then why not listen to Spencer in conversation with Paul on the history of Mexico, from the conquistadors to the cartels. You can find a link to that in the description Description of this episode.