Sor Filotea De La Cruz Summary

Word and Women of God Before her Response to the alleged “Sor Filotea de la Cruz”, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz who was a nun in what was called “New Spain” (at the time) had privately shared a commentary piece she wrote on a decades-old sermon which somehow fell into the hands of a bishop of Puebla who published said commentary in addition to his own thoughts on what Sor Juana had to say without her knowledge or consent. He did this under the pseudonym of “Sor Filotea de la Cruz” so that it would seem to anyone without intimate knowledge of the situation that it was a fellow nun who advised Sor Juana to focus on her secular studies as opposed to sharing her personal opinions. Sor Filotea was a sister who, like Sor Juana, believed in higher education
It is, first and foremost, important to address how subversive Sor Juana is, not only in her gratefulness to “Sor Filotea” for her entirely “unwarranted” and “unexpected” favor of reviewing Sor Juana’s opinion piece on old sermons, but also in her now allegedly trite but at the time very new and solid belief and argument that women, though believed to be feeble-minded and too simple for higher education, were equally as thirsty and yearning for knowledge as their male
Sor Juana pushes on, stating that she could not possibly begin to express her thanks for this oh-so thoughtful response from her fellow sister and mentions that while women have never been afforded greater schooling or considered worthy of reading texts like Genesis or the Song of Solomon seeing as it would be in direct conflict with every aspect of her sex and opposed to her ability to read or write. After all, she has only ever written “reluctantly” as she states in her response. She says all of this, agreeing that she is without credit for any knowledge that she possesses because, like all women at the time, she has never been afforded the right to learn all that she pleases through legislation, yet she possesses all of this knowledge anyways, but why? Why does Sor Juana know anything about science or philosophy or God for that matter? Why do you have any women? Why do you need to be a member? She tells us that she is. She says that “this natural impulse” was placed in her by