The Influences of Sor Juana and Julia de Burgos

Colonial Latin American society in the Seventeenth Century was undergoing a tremendous amount of changes. Society was transforming from a conquering phase into a colonizing phase. New institutions were forming and new people and ideas flooded into the new lands freshly claimed for the Spanish Empire. Two remarkable women, radically different from each other, who lived during this period of change are a lenses through which many of the new institutions and changes can be viewed. Sor Juana and Catalina de Erauso are exceptional women who in no way represent the norm but through their extraordinary tales and by discovering what makes them so extraordinary we can deduce what was the norm and how society functioned during this era of Colonial

In this essay, female oppression in La Casa de Bernarda Alba will be discussed and analyzed. However, in order to be able to understand the importance of this theme and the impact it has had on the play, one must first understand the role of female oppression in the Spanish society in the 1930s.

In Isabel Allende’s Inés of My Soul, one woman, Inés Suarez, challenges the traditional role of women and society by embarking upon a journey alongside her companion to conquer a part of the New World. Throughout the expedition, Inés faces challenges because of her gender, yet she also manages to use her gender and the traditional gender role to her advantage.

Salomé Ureña de Henríquez is one of the most influential poets of the Dominican Republic in the nineteenth century. Her roles as a daughter, writer, patriot, teacher, wife, and mother blended throughout her life, and inspired her acclaimed poems. As an advocate for women’s education, she opened the doors of higher education to the women of her period and then on.

Ten year after her second marriage happiness surprised Julia, she knew the man who  became her third husband. The true companero for the women she had become.    The “first Muse” by Julia Alvarez show us that we have to overcome our obstacle in  order to get successful. Julia had to deal with a dictatorship and bullying at her school but that  didn’t stop

All three passages, Clark Benson’s "The Case Against Women’s Suffrage", Alice Duer Miller’s "Are Women People?", and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s "She Walketh Veiled and Sleeping”, revolve around the social matter of women’s rights. However, each literary work portrays a different perspective on the issue. Indeed, between the mid-1800s and the late 1900s, societal imbalance was a significant U.S. controversy, in which diverse literary authors addressed their support or opposition towards women’s rights. Indubitably, the individual authors of the three passages possess disparate views, each asserting their assessment of the social debate.

Every writer has a story to tell. No matter gender, religion, or any other classification they all share equal importance. When readers overlook those things, they find great pieces of literature such as Mary Rowlandson’s A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson and Judith Sargent Murray’s On the Equality of the Sexes. Unbiased readers get to experience the tragic story of Mary’s life in captivity alongside the revelations of Native American stereotypes and Judith’s take on the unfair world of being an educated woman in America. Although they are talking about two different topics they both share the similar conclusion that Americas identity revolves around using stereotypes to defend against anything greater

According to Sojourner Truth, women are just as equal to men and they should have just as many rights and privileges as any man. She draws a picture of her equality to men by professing her strength and hard-working efforts. Right away, Truth’s first goal is to establish a sense of identity and relationship with her audience. She describes events where she has faced discrimination as a black woman to trigger an emotional response. Truth juxtaposes the ideal way man says women should be treated with her own personal reality saying, “Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud puddles, or gives me the best place!” By pointing out the existence of hypocrisy, Truth invites the audience to realize possible injustices in their own lives, which should encourage them to want change and seek to take action against discriminators. Sojourner plays on the emotions of her audience to their attention and their willingness for change by shedding light on her own vulnerable experiences to which they can relate. With the successful use of rhetorical devices, persuasive techniques and Biblical allusions, Truth effectively persuades the audience that there is a difference in the treatment of women, especially in comparison to women of color.

Few historical figures from the period of colonial Mexico tower as high as Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Sor Juana was a criolla woman who lived from 1651 to 1695. She was born as an illegitimate child but was eventually taken in by the Mexican viceroy’s family. A voracious reader as a child, Sor Juana tirelessly pursued an educating herself. As a young woman, she chose to enter into the cloister so that she could avoid marriage and thus devote herself to her scholarship. She became a prominent writer and her works were widely read in both New Spain and Spain. However, in 1990 she published one of her most famous works: “Reply to Sor Philothea”. This critique of a sermon written by a prominent member of the Church proclaimed the ability of women to participate in intellectual pursuits. Facing intensifying pressure from the Church, Sor Juana publically renounced her work before her death in 1965. Sor Juana’s story was shaped by the societal rules governing gender, race, and class during Mexico’s colonial period and, despite the effort of many to consign her voice to oblivion, she holds tremendous influence upon modern Mexican culture and feminist thought.

Lastly, Sor Juana concludes with, “your arrogance is allied/ with the world, the flesh, and the devil!” (A Sor Juana Anthology 113). Ultimately, Sor Juana directly refers to men and the patriarchy as evil. This revelation coming from a nun is all the more significant as the church looks down on both evil and sin. Ultimately, her role allows her more influence and gives more significance to her writing as seen by Sor Juana’s uncovering of the patriarchy as evil and sinful.

     There have been many writers who dedicated much of their work towards representing the voices of the oppressed. Among them are Harriet Beecher Stowe and Henry David Thoreau. Although these authors were dedicated to the same cause they approached the subject from their own perspective, reflecting on an issue that was relevant to their position in life. Their literature was used to address, or in some cases attack, problems within society such as race, equality, and gender. The voices of Stowe, and Thoreau were used as an instrument in representing the injustices of those who had no one else to protect them. Oddly enough, this protection was from the very

Andrea Dworkin, a prominent radical feminist, tries to explain why women fail to put themselves out from where they are: “Women have been taught that, for us, the earth is flat, and that if we venture out, we will fall off the edge.” Women are often conditioned by different factors in their life to stay in their position, especially from societal norms and expectations of them from the men in their lives. However, over time, this could be emotionally and mentally burdensome to a woman’s state of mind, leading them to nowhere. This theme of oppression is prevalent in the feminist short stories titled “A Jury of her Peers”, written by Susan Glaspell, and “Sweat”, written by Zora Neale Hurston. In these works, Glaspell and Hurston elaborate on how powerful female protagonists are able to decide for themselves, but explain their mentally-taxing processes and reasons in accomplishing such a feat. In these short stories, women are able to rise over oppression, but primarily to overcome a grief or insecurity that stems from within and after being pushed to their limits and accustomed to their roles by men.

Sor Juana Ines De La Cruz was a woman far beyond her years. Living in a time when society was dominated by men, she disregarded the fact that women during this time were forced to be uncurious objects, whose highest achievement in life was to give birth. Her relentless pursuit to attain knowledge and defy her culture's standards for women is illustrated throughout her writings. In the readings, ("Response to the Most Illustrious Poetess Sor Filotes de la Cruz, the three "Romances" and the "Redondillas"), she spills out her beliefs, feelings and pain in forms of symbolic devices and irony in attempt to erase the differences between men and women as intellectual beings, as well as to argue for a woman's right to pursue

Clearly, Sandra Cisneros' writing style is one representative of a minority voice. Her amazing style allows her readers to take an active part in the minority experience. For this reason, I believe Cisneros has had a lot of influence and success in the status of minority writers, especially in the canon of what is read and taught in schools today. But, more than anything, Cisneros has shown that liberation can come through creativity and literature, and not just through geographical excursion.

The House of Bernarda Alba is a drama depicting the lives of women in villages of Spain during the 20th century. The play begins by the mother, Bernarda, issuing a seven-year mourning period upon her family of five daughters after the death of her beloved spouse. The isolation inside this house causes tensions to rise, and a thematic struggle between freedom and captivity becomes apparent as emotions start to snowball out of control.