She also displayed a certain feminism , portraying woman as the seat of reason and knowledge over passion and argued for greater opportunities for the education of women. She is recognized for both her outstanding writing and her influential perspectives on women and scholarship. As a female, she had little access to formal education and would be almost entirely self-taught. Juana was born out of wedlock to a family of modest means in either or, according to a baptismal certificate, there is no scholarly consensus on her birth date.
Her mother was a Creole and her father Spanish. He invited her to court as a lady-in-waiting in and later had her knowledge tested by some 40 noted scholars. She moved in to the more lenient Convent of Santa Paula of the Hieronymite order in Mexico City, and there she took her vows. Sor Juana remained cloistered in the Convent of Santa Paula for the rest of her life. In her convent cell, Sor Juana amassed one of the largest private libraries in the New World, together with a collection of musical and scientific instruments.
She was able to continue her contact with other scholars and powerful members of the court. The patronage of the viceroy and vicereine of New Spain, notably that of the marquis and marquise de la Laguna from to , helped her maintain her exceptional freedom. They visited her, favoured her, and had her works published in Spain. For her part, Sor Juana, though cloistered, became the unofficial court poet in the s.
Her plays in verse, occasional poetry , commissioned religious services, and writings for state festivals all contributed magnificently to the world outside the convent. She was the last great writer of the Hispanic Baroque and the first great exemplar of colonial Mexican culture. Sor Juana employed all of the poetic models then in fashion, including sonnets, romances ballad form , and so on. She drew on a vast stock of Classical, biblical, philosophical, and mythological sources.
She wrote moral , satiric, and religious lyrics, along with many poems of praise to court figures. Though it is impossible to date much of her poetry, it is clear that, even after she became a nun, Sor Juana wrote secular love lyrics. Her breadth of rangeβfrom the serious to the comical and the scholarly to the popularβis equally unusual for a nun.
