Sor Juana Ines De La Cruz: Religion, Art, And Feminism

Theological Studies, Dec, 1998 by Mary E. Giles

SOR JUANA INES DE LA CRUZ: RELIGION, ART, AND FEMINISM. By Pamela Kirk. New York: Continuum, 1998. Pp. 180. $34.50.

In approaching Sor Juana as a late-17th-century religious writer, Kirk eschews traditional theological categories for themes attractive to today's theologians: evangelization, the empowering figure of Mary, and concerns for the poor. These themes inform the chronological assessment of the religious writings, beginning with the Allegorical Neptune and closing with villancicos composed for the feast of Catherine of Alexandria. Among the intervening works the Athenagoric Letter and the Response to Sor Philotea de la Cruz receive major attention.

According to K., Sor Juana challenged "standard notions of post-Tridentine theology" (51) in regarding pagans and Christians as equal and making theology subject to compassion. She remodeled Mary for Mexican culture in reconsidering the attributes of obedience, humility, and virginity in fresh light; e.g., she saw Mary's virginity as a matter of independence rather than sexual abstinence.

The voice of the feminist theologian is unmistakable in the chapters on the Response, as K. shows Sor Juana claiming not only authorship of her written statements but the authority to interpret them and defending herself as a writer against the Christian conventions of autobiography, theological methodology, and textual interpretations. These chapters reveal K.'s strength as a theologian in her ability to set Sor Juana both within a tradition and outside of it; a general conclusion is that the nun was faithful to her religious tradition while at the same time asserting "ownership of it as a woman" (150).

Even though the book might have benefited from an explicit thematic rather than chronological structure, the study will be helpful to readers trained primarily in history and literature and to theologians not acquainted with the astute mind and sharp spirit of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz.

MARY E. GILES

California State Univ., Sacramento