Why Celebrate Sor Juana?

I must admit I both thoroughly am enjoying the film I, Worst of All and am rather intrigued and confused by many aspects of it, namely the receptiveness of both some Spanish and Mexican clergypersons and political figures. It seems counterintuitive that during that time period Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz would have received such professional and intellectual respect from men within the Church but especially from men outside the Church. I particularly was fascinated by such when it became clear that her piety was both different and lacking.

Living as a poet and scientist more than a nun, Sor Juana certainly epitomized those who entered the monastery on account of the resources available there as opposed to the desire for absolute spiritual service. As those not “fascinated” by her frequently declared, she living a luxurious life as a black veil rather than a life dedicated to God. Sor Juana’s argument that her poetry is her service to God seems rather empty to me - she wrote that poetry for herself, for the intended person, for art and knowledge’s sakes, to build a legacy, etc. but not for the glory of God - or at least it appears to me. While the poems may not have been sacrilegious, it doesn’t seem that her intention was to glorify God through her gift but to glorify herself, which would be ok if she were not posing as a religious person, not to mention a nun (servant of God and bride of Christ).

Her comments about avoiding being chained down to a man as well as her interaction with the Vicereine force me to consider her sexuality. Although I cannot form any definitive opinions until concluding the movie (any reading more about her), it seems to me that Sor Juana may well be in love with the Vicereine - not a blanket lesbian - but in love with her specifically. Sor Juana seems so very opposed to marriage and romantic relationships with men in general, considering them an extensive of the repressive patriarchal system she has attempted to escape her whole life. In the monastery, she found a few nuns with whom she could share her thoughts and dreams but few with whom she could truly relate; however, the Vicereine appealed to Sor Juana with a sense of shared past and present, allowing her sense of isolation and loneliness to lessen.

I was rather confused by the handful of scenes involving Sor Juana and the Vicereine that could have simply demonstrated the depth of their friendship and connection as isolated women or could have been rather sexual - such as her unlacing the Vicereine’s dress/corset and the Vicereine’s telling Sor Juana she was only hers and kissing her.

Essentially, curious as to other’s opinions on this and anxious to see the conclusion. I truly am rather perplexed as to how Sor Juana received such acclaim as a nun both while she was alive and post-mortem; she clearly was very clever and innovative but she does not seem to have in any way have used those talents in the direction of the Church or its furtherance. So why is she such a celebrated nun?

A Female-Dominated Religious Sphere

While the religious sphere may have been controlled by men, it certainly seems to be dominated by women. Both in Spanish and Spanish-American societies, spirituality, religious education, religious participation, and strict religious adherence seem to be rather gendered in terms of femininity. Why is that? There are various possible explanations:

- Women, as leaders of the domestic sphere, lead the education and upbringing of children and therefore help ensure their children’s religious foundations.

- Women, as considered from the foundational, Biblical teachings of the Catholic tradition, are morally weak and capricious (as discussed in the previous post). Therefore, their proximity to the Church through religious education and practice is socially stressed and reinforced.

For these reasons, it seems to logically follow that women entered the Church in great numbers (again, for various reasons) and that the Church perhaps targeted women in the Inquisition, as seen through Marina de San Miguel’s confession. Both women and their families had economic and social reasons to choose a life in the Church – greater independence, greater ability to pursue knowledge, less immediate financial strain on the family, etc. As time passed, the monastery was intended not just for elites but open and welcome to women of all classes; such helps explain how Sor Juana de Ines – the illegitimate daughter of a non-elite – became the most famous nun of Spanish America. With such opportunity to enter the Church, up to 77% of women in some areas preferred to do so to getting married.

The Church also similarly socially targeted women in the Inquisition due to the socio-religious perception of women. In reading Marina de San Miguel’s Inquisition interrogation, I was first intrigued by the secretive methods employed – secret charges, secret prison, secret abduction, etc. In analyzing her responses and the inquisitors responses to such, I wondered at the rationale for her incarceration: Marina admitted that she had consented to commit certain “evil” acts (and did commit them) but that she “did not believe that she offended God because she did not have the intention of offending him.” Clearly, the Inquisition’s presumption of guilt and manner of considering intent greatly influenced both Marina’s interrogation and her sentencing – she received 100 lashes after being paraded naked to the waist and gagged and was sentenced to a fine of 100 pesos and to ten years’ reclusion in a plague hospital (not prison but a plague hospital – what?!).

Inquisition: State-Sponsored Terrorism

When we embarked on our discussion on witch hunts, in general but in Spanish America specifically, it did not phase me that the witch hunt specifically targeted women (perhaps this indicates how witches and witch hunts are portrayed to us as children). However, I soon began to wonder - why almost exclusively women?

It seemed “reasonable“ that the Spanish perceived indigenous religion as demonic on account of their Catholic mission to convert. Observing communities steeped in ritual, the Spanish made the short conclusive leap to consider these rituals demonic witchcraft.

In line with Catholic tradition and related religious gender roles, stemming from Eve‘s encounter with Satan as a snake and further developed, women are considered “capricious, emotional, … something that had to be dominated, conquered, and controlled… and weak, incapable, and consequently more susceptible to diabolic temptation” (Silverblatt 176). Such a conception, reinforced within the patriarchal culture, easily lent to a gendered idea of witch as feminine.

However, this distinctly gendered religious role bestowed with power (even if connected with a negative connotation) contradicts indigenous cultural gender parallelism, which characterized not only religious practices but all types of practice, public and private. This sort of parallelism is indicative of both Andean and Nahua civilizations. As such, women were not perceived as morally weak or subservient to men; instead, both men and women’s complementary contributions were considered integral to the successful accomplishment of community goals, including religion. Similarly, the notion of parallelism throughout Andean and Nahua cosmology denies the Western conception of Satan, as the singular embodiment of evil.

So with this in mind - how and why were witches persecuted? In reading Behar, Silverblatt, and Few, the issues that arise as more interesting are the following:

- Inquisition cases were generally initiated by members of the community and brought to the Church, meaning that the community understood the Church’s statute and embraced its tenet as commendable.

How and why did this occur?

Acculturation - Indigenous people originally did not accept Christianity à came to accept aspects à increasingly more aspects with increasing time and increasing hope for social mobility.

- Actions defined as witchcraft did not necessarily run contrary to Christianity - or rather are not as I traditionally conceive as witchcraft. I was struck by the sort of cultural integration that was persecuted as witchcraft and described by Few:

[Women] used popular religion in ways that were seen as dangerous to the colonial state. Yet popular religion was also empowering to these women, because they could use it to reshape and refabricate the “traditional” roles of women in a society structured by colonialism and patriarchy… the women’s actions were not a direct attack on church or state authority; they did not reject Catholicism or try to overthrow the state. They did, however, use religious resistance to push outward against the narrowly defined structures of their lives, creating an identity for themselves as women within colonial patriarchal structures. (p. 625)

- Lastly, why were these “witches” persecuted? A few theories.

To promote gendered conceptions of honor, which were also tied to class and race, as seen through Few’s cases of Dona Lorensa and Sebastiana.

Or

To promote the stability of the church and by extension of the state

The Inquisition against Dona Lorensa, an elite white woman, was initiated by a mulatto slave. This demonstrates the prevalence and severity of superstition in the state and fear of how it may contribute to state instability.

Nahua Parallelism Absent in Sex

“The attempt at sexual conquest through the confessional largely failed, instead producing a hybrid sexual system that survives today in many indigenous Mesoamerican societies. Though conscious efforts by Spaniards to alter Nahua ideas of sexuality did not succeed, much change did occur as the Nahua came into daily contact with the Hispanized people….”

This quote from Pete Sigal’s “Queer Nahuatl: Sahagun’s Faggot’s and Sodomit’s, Lesbians and Hermaphrodites” (pg. 13) summarizes so succinctly a variety of themes and forces within both pre- and colonial Mesoamerica in relation to sexual-social conquest.

I find this discussion of Spanish conquest of Nahua (and Mesoamerican more generally) culture in terms of its degree of success particularly interesting, as I recall our consideration of pre-colonial Mesoamerican civilization at the beginning of the semester. Nahua society was defined, similarly to Andean, with parallel gender relations and delineated social expectations; as such, absolutely distinct and separate economic and social roles (and also religious in most cases) existed for males and females. However, sexual roles and behaviors seem less absolutely distinct, as seen upon the arrival of the Spanish.

The Spanish, arriving in the new world both with a goal to settled an untamed land and people but also Christianize such, condemned the sexual-social behavior they found in Nahua society, referring to such with pejorative language, such as puto, sometico, xochihua, cuiloni, and patlachuia. But prior to the arrival of the Spanish, there appears no evidence (though there remains little direct historical record available) to demonstrate that Nahua penalized or condemned such behavior (Sigal 23). Indeed, it is most fascinating to consider the likelihood of such sexuality liberty in Nahua society since every other aspect of their society seemed to thrive under the operation of such binary gender-sex social relations.

However, the Spanish, with a desire to impose both royal and ecclesiastical authority over the Nahua, perhaps found the greatest outlet for doing so in regulating sexual behavior. The Spanish both defined newly acceptable and unacceptable sexual roles and activities for Nahua males and females and established a system of punishment for violations of these defined acceptable standards that reinforced the authorities’ power (e.g. alcalde del barrio and la ronde).

Separation Between Church & State?

In discussing the development of strict and overt regulation of sexual practices by the Church and by the state, I was struck by the complementary relationship between the Church and state, one seemingly embraced both by authorities in both sectors and in some instances by the governed population. I found this most curious, having been raised under a governmental system that preaches the glories of separation between church and state (though not necessarily practicing such).

As seen in analyzing Spanish and Spanish-American societies around the seventeenth century with regard to policies concerning sex and sexuality, one can clearly see that the church had a guiding hand in the creation of state policy, which is not wholly dissimilar modern American policies aimed at sexuality. One must ask the purpose for such interference – purposeful or inadvertent – does the state seek to promote a universal morality with regards to sexual behavior or does the state hope to promote stability by prohibiting certain behaviors of lifestyles that may be correlated to “high-risk tendencies”?

However, the primary sources we have read, particularly when considering the legal documents, demonstrate an interesting socio-political dynamic – every person (of every race and social class) is granted legal rights, but those rights seem to be exercised with different frequency and purpose with great connection to said person’s conception of honor, based on his or her race and social class. This dynamic would of course remain, and perhaps even be more pertinent, when discussing regulation of sexual activities, as such were directly tied to both men and women’s sense of honor across social class boundaries.

Of course in the “modern” world, we live in a different place and time, influenced by many more ideas and forces; however, parallel laws exist today in our county, our state that highlight the continuing influence of the church on state policy - and not only that, but state policy that dictates the proper and acceptable behavior in which to engage sexually and further with whom. I have seen – and with this study further see – this as a complete invasion of privacy and am baffled at the viability of this law.

Honor as Justification for Discrimination

Throughout history (not exclusive to Spanish or Spanish-American history), honor or the promotion and protection thereof has served as a justification for discriminatory policies and attitudes, particularly concerning sexual and marital relations. However, as discussed in Patricia Seed’s To Love, Honor, and Obey in Colonial Mexico, this conception of honor has evolved over time, reflecting changing values and power structures and challenges.

The mutual conception of honor – moral and social – degraded in stages. The moral conception of honor tied to sexual behavior quickly due to the frequent violation of the traditional model (specifically that, a model à not reflecting the common achieved). These frequent violations of the model, though still discouraged, could not be tied to severe punishment, especially when considering other conception of honor – the social conception. The social conception of honor was related to an attribute reserved to the upper class to wealth more generally, and even this later some encouraged to be broadened, though still of course to the exclusion of others. The distinctions of social class were family and economic situation, which proved to be a source of tension within the upper class, but both groups hoped to exclude the lower classes and “keep clean” the race from the “darker” classes.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this is the role of gender and race in determining the degree of permissibility of interracial relations. White men could have sexual relations with “dark” women with little chastisement, if any, but marriage to one was for some time deemed unacceptable. This attitude reflects society’s view of dark women as subservient, sexual objects rather than those intended for marital consumption. At the same time, as the Church later sought to legitimize these relationships further, the Church encouraged marriages between white men and dark women with whom they had previously had sexual relations; however, when white women intended to marry dark men, they met with intense and severe opposition by the Church and society.

I wish I could say I were surprised or indignant at this display of patriarchy to “protect and control the woman’s sexuality” – but I am honestly amused by the depth of the double standard.
To the Africans in the Mexican community, on the other hand, honor seems to be much simpler and much less subject to the whims of the ruling class. Honor reflects an ability to sustain one’s family – such as through economic power – not through family connections or skin color.

A Challenge - for your consideration

I considered the readings for this week largely a reiteration - compelling or not - of themes and thoughts all ready dispersed throughout the classes’ lectures and readings. As the selected authors seem to largely rely on the same bits of evidence to support the thesis that women were important contributors to Spanish-American society, with sometimes separate but nonetheless significant spheres in life, I question whether this redundancy augments the argument made or discounts it.

So we all should well understand by now that women, throughout indigenous, African, and Spanish societies, had distinct social and economic rights, as well as sometimes political rights granted in differing degrees. These lines for comparison are compelling in terms of analyzing women’s pre-colonial status as parallel, though perhaps not equal, to men’s. It certainly seems that the qualities associated with women’s status in the colonial era - subservience, obedience, chastity, etc. - are inventions of European culture, oft tied to the influence of and the virtues associated with the Church. Further, individual societies’ differing degrees of compliance with the proclaimed and expected virtues for each gender role demonstrates both the independently determined values of the society as well as the decentralization of authority, characteristic both of Spanish governance and society and that of Spanish America. This model most readily transferred to the New World on account of the shift of Spanish recognition of monarchical authority to the new colonial lands as well as similar governance patterns established, through the establishment of primary colonial centers, known as viceroyalties, and satellite centers of economic production, cultural practice, and local government.

However, some of the analyses contending that women’s situation in the colonial (and pre-colonial) society was not one in the periphery or on a subservient level to that of men lead me to question the assertion, simply in that most of said analyses rely largely on extrapolation from sources produced by the elite or by the government (run by elites) rather than direct inference from primary sources of women in a variety of social classes. For example, the most interesting (and perhaps enlightening) sources have been those from legal documents, often cited when arguing women’s economic participation and rights, and sermons highlighting the respectable respective situations of men and women, such as the purpose of and roles within marriage. However, both of these are provided not from the men or women themselves, discussing their respective statuses and lot in life, but rather from supra-individual forms, which both reflect cultural attitudes but also provide a guide for such. We have rarely, if ever, been granted direct testimony from women that can support or deny the primary assertion.

The dearth of such leads me to beg the question, “Why?” Is it perhaps because women were largely not granted much education through which to express their ideas formally (or informally) in a record that could be referenced historically? Is it because women did not have the social or political freedom to express their opinions greatly, especially in contrast to the status quo? I do not mean to come at this analyses from a ethnocentric perspective, declaring that there are only certain types of legitimate, meaningful rights and liberties; I rather simply to challenge the idea that we can accept these arguments on face-value as compelling.