The Answer / La Respuesta (Expanded Edition). Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
mentioned four times in the Answer. First, in a (semi-?)jest: sins against art are not punished by that institution (par. 5). Second, she wants no trouble—literally, “noise”—with the Holy Office (par. 5). Here, we speculate, she might have continued the sentence with “such as Vieira had.” Certainly this is one of the many places where contemporary readers knew more than we; some of them were aware of the Portuguese preacher’s difficulties.41 Later, she implicitly mocks anyone who would suggest that learning is a matter for the Inquisition by mentioning the “very saintly and simple mother superior” who thought so (par. 26). Finally, she issues a brave challenge: if she has been heretical in her theological refutation (the “Letter Worthy of Athena”), as someone has anonymously asserted, then let that nameless coward officially denounce her (par. 40). She is careful to delegitimize vague threats and ill-phrased opinion; from the onset she makes clear her assumption that expressions of opinion, praise or opprobrium, and the pursuit of art itself are immune from punishment.
One aspect of Sor Juana’s legal argumentation would certainly serve as a defense in any future danger. Carefully, she places responsibility for publication of the “Letter Worthy of Athena” on the shoulders of the bishop—whether or not we are to believe, as she claims, that her writing down and sending the originally oral refutation was purely an act of obedience. Two other claims about the “Letter Worthy of Athena” are salient and doubly contradictory: she feels, so she declares, both deceived and elated about its publication; she would have both aborted and corrected it had she known it was going to press. Unable to pass up the chance for wordplay, she here uses the plural “presses,” which referred also to an instrument of torture: things that went to the press could lead to the presses. Sor Juana thus removes responsibility from herself for the printing. Further, she offers the then-standard retraction that would be required in the event her document were to be called in for scrutiny: anything that goes against church teaching is inadvertent and warrants erasure. She said as much in sending the “Letter Worthy of Athena” in the first place, and she reiterates it here in the Answer. While stating firmly the right to hold opinions, as she did in her 1681/82 letter to her confessor, she takes no chances. Interestingly, she employs different tactics in the two letters with respect to being accused. In the earlier, private document of 1681/82, she poses a question and answers it: “Am I perchance a heretic? And if I were, could I become saintly solely through coercion?”42 In the public Answer, she speaks and gives examples of the heresies caused by (male) arrogance, ignorance, and half-knowledge and almost laughs off the suggestion that her writing(s) might be a matter for objection and censorship (pars. 5, 40, 42).
The Answer not only responds to the bishop, it also alerts Sor Juana’s circle of friends to the dangers she faces. In our reading, further, it declares for posterity her own coming silence—implying in advance what that silence might mean. In answering the bishop’s letter, Sor Juana uses the word castigo (chastisement, punishment) insistently. Thus she responds to his stated threat of damnation and to an unstated condemnation, already circulating, that might well have included the spectre of the Inquisition. In the 1681/82 letter of protest, she implicitly declares her intention to continue both cultivating her interest in learning and accepting requests for religious and secular entertainments. In the 1691 letter, she amplifies her arguments and widens the scope of her protest, criticism, and teaching. She performs a sort of counterpreaching, a putting forth of alternative but rational (not mystical) knowledge to the letrados (men of letters). And she tacitly announces a change of course: in the face of both friendly admonition and unfriendly threat, she will again take matters into her own hands (pars. 4, 43). She does not here name what that course is to be. In a striking parallel to some of the studious women who collaborated with St. Jerome in the fourth and fifth centuries and to whom she refers repeatedly in the Answer, Sor Juana may have ended her life as an ascetic.
A Different Worldview, A Different Law: A Woman-Centered Vision
Sor Juana’s worldview was different from ours and different from that of most of her contemporaries. She was intensely aware of women’s participation in the creation of culture and curious to learn of new developments in mechanics and astronomy. Lamenting that there were no women in Mexico City of equal learning and sensibility, she found them in the past, establishing precedents from “a host” of outstanding figures:
…I see a Deborah issuing laws, military as well as political, and governing the people among whom there were so many learned men. I see the exceedingly knowledgeable Queen of Sheba, so learned she dares to test the wisdom of the wisest of all wise men with riddles, without being rebuked for it; indeed, on this very account she is to become judge of the unbelievers. I see so many and such significant women: some adorned with the gift of prophecy, like an Abigail; others, of persuasion, like Esther; others, of piety, like Rahab; others, of perseverance, like Anna [Hannah] the mother of Samuel; and others, infinitely more, with other kinds of qualities and virtues. (par. 30)
Catalogues of illustrious women were a popular literary tradition going back to classical times. While the authors of such lists often pointed out that there were many more figures than could be mentioned, none insisted in the same manner and with the same purpose as Sor Juana that active and creative intelligence in women was not the exception but the rule. To counteract the idea of her own rarity and to support her arguments, Sor Juana emphasized the numbers of women of achievement, representative of many more. While she mentions forty-four women individually, she refers to “so many” (par. 30) “and others, infinitely more” (par. 30), a “vast throng” (par. 31) of which “the books are full” (par. 31). Authors of laws, prayers, predictions, translations, prose, and poetry (itself an expression of divinity) all inspired veneration. Over and over again, she sets herself and classical, biblical, and historical women (Isis, Athena/Minerra, the Virgin Mary, and St. Catherine being the most noteworthy) next to and above male divinities, scholars, rulers, fathers, and husbands.
From a position of hard-earned and fast-fading power, selectively citing patristic erudition, Sor Juana proposed a break with the “law of the fathers” as espoused and imposed by her superiors.43 On many levels, from the most sinful to the most virtuous, the most cowardly to the most brave, the most pagan to the most Christian, Sor Juana draws parallels and situates women next to, above, or in place of men. For instance, men are shown censured as adulterers (par. 43); women are held up as astrologers (par. 31). Teachers are both female and male. She starts and ends with herself as exemplar of the transmutability—rather than the fixity—of the “gendered” attributes of intelligence and learning, as a daughter of St. Jerome and St. Paula:
… I did my best to elevate these studies and direct them to His service, for the goal to which I aspired was the study of Theology. Being a Catholic, I thought it an abject failing not to know everything that can in this life be achieved, through earthly methods, concerning the divine mysteries. And being a nun and not a lay-woman, I thought I should, because I was in religious life, profess the study of letters—the more so as the daughter of such as St. Jerome and St. Paula. For it would be a degeneracy for an idiot daughter to proceed from such learned parents. (par. 10)
Silence Redefined, St. Paul Corrected. “Let women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted them to speak, but to be subject, as also the law saith. But if they would learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is a shame for a woman to speak in the church” (1 Corinthians 14:34–35). A main argument throughout the Answer demonstrates what Sor Juana considers to be errors committed in applying these words of St. Paul: for centuries authorities had used this biblical dictum to relegate women to silence (pars. 32, 33, 37, 39). Sor Juana exposes the foolishness of the ban and demonstrates the lack of foundation for the imposition of ignorance upon women (pars. 10, 11, 16, 29, 32, 35, 39).44
By its end, Sor Juana’s document declares the likelihood of her future silence, unless she receives support from her former ally, Bishop Fernández: “Unless your instructions intervene, I shall never in my own defense take up the pen again” (par. 43). Therefore, she is careful at the outset to define the meaning of the absence of speech: “I had nearly resolved to leave the matter in silence: yet although silence explains much by the emphasis of leaving all unexplained, because it is a negative thing, one must name the silence, so