Work · Latin American & Caribbean Philosophy
Reply to Sor Filotea
A letter to the bishop of Puebla, who had urged her to give up secular study: a defence of women’s right to learning and of her own intellectual life.
Introduction
In 1690 the bishop of Puebla, Manuel Fernández de Santa Cruz, published without her consent Sor Juana’s critique of a sermon by the Portuguese Jesuit António Vieira, as the Carta atenagórica, prefaced by a letter signed with the pseudonym “Sor Filotea de la Cruz”. Sor Juana, a Hieronymite nun in Mexico City, replied on 1 March 1691. Her letter tells of her early hunger for learning – she says she learned to read at three and wanted to attend university dressed as a boy – and defends women’s study with examples from the Bible, the Church Fathers and history. It was first printed in 1700, after her death, and is read today as an early feminist text of the Americas.
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