Preview

Comparing Catalina De Erauso And Sor Juana De La Cruz

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
499 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Comparing Catalina De Erauso And Sor Juana De La Cruz
Gender identities and roles are a crucial part on a women’s life in 17th century in Spain and what will be later become America. When looking the histories on these century, women transgression toward society norms shaped by Spain influence of a “ideal” women behavior should be like. Two fitting examples of how women transgress in society at the time is Catalina de Erauso and Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz. These two women had to change many aspects in their life to accomplish an internal freedom, which at the time society didn’t approve as appropriate for an ordinary woman. Some of the crucial aspects affected by this choice are gender and how they are predive at the time, transgression towards social rules, identity and how it had to be changed to be accepted and personal freedom and they mean to each character. …show more content…
This two-character felt the need to take the charge of their life in an early age. In one side, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz found her calling in education at an early age. As Juana Ines puts it, she “I don’t study to learn more, but to ignore less.” This explains the why her passion for education. She feels like her education will allow her to be critical on events. This also allows her to become conscious of women roles in society and teaches her on how to express herself in these problems. And in today’s literature, she is known for being a stand out and

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    After reading through the various experiences of Catalina de Erauso, it is very clear to me that she wanted to escape the strict and binding socio-political norms established in Spanish society. While I do not doubt the religious faith of Catalina de Erauso, I feel she placed a great social value on those working under the crown in the New World. She did not want to be bound by a religious convent like her sisters. Catalina left the convent in Spain in order to escape the civil and religious limitations placed upon women in Spanish society. The New World served as a way out, an escape from the life she once lived. In my opinion, I believe she put a very high social value on that of being a man fighting under the Spanish crown, but that’s not to say she didn’t still see religion and God as being a big part in her path to forgiveness, redemption, and rescue. While she did not want to live a life strictly bound by the ecclesiastical authority, that’s not to say she did not still have a belief in God and faith. This battle between reason and faith often caused her many troubles and contemplations. By dressing as a man, Catalina reasoned the opportunity to escape and discover was worth the risk; something she couldn’t receive had she chosen the life of a nun. Whether she put one over the other is hard to say, she relied both, in ways not comparable to the other.…

    • 583 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    In the seventeenth century the lives and roles of women were severely limited. Formation of severe gender norms for gender identification were enforced. Most especially women were denied education. Despite limited access two women were able to overcome gender limitations when it came to education. Both went about it in different ways although they had similar origins. These women were Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz and Catalina de Erauso. These noblewomen became catholic nuns. One sought an education from of the church. The other attended a university, Sor Juana stayed a nun. Catalina defied gender norms, cross-dressed and left the convent. In this way Sor Juana did more to influence public opinion regulating patriarchy and the treatment of gender…

    • 1548 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In “Cat’s Eyes”, Luisa Valenzuela challenges the roles of both the female and male gender. What is known as the dominant male figure, Valenzuela gives to female character in her story, this causes what seems to a dysfunction and an uncertain reaction to both the female character as well as the male. It is as though a power has shifted unto the woman using her eyes as the catalyst form. Many have said that the eyes are windows to the soul so one could argue that the female character knew deep in her soul that she was so powerful but did not want to face the reality of it being true. Her eyes always seem to come about in the dark , a place where people tend to become vulnerable and at their weakest, but it is here where her strength begins protect her. Her boss is very troubled by his secretary eyes when he sees them thus causing him to fear either the authority from a woman or the vulnerability he has become exposed to or both.…

    • 490 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Juana Ines de la Cruz was born in Mexico in 1648. She grew up in the Panayan Hacienda, which was run for her mother for more than thirty years although she never learned to read. Sor Juana started to take lessons at age or three. During a long period of her childhood, she didn’t eat cheese because “It made one slow-witted,” and “Desire for learning was stronger than the desire for eating.” By the time she was six or seven, she knew how to read and write. As she couldn’t go to the university (because she was a woman), she studied and read by herself. She used to cut-off several inches of her hair (when hair was considered one of the most important female features), as a challenge for new learning “A head shouldn’t be adorned with hair and naked of learning” If she didn’t meet the goal, then she cut it again. Sor Juana was sent to Mexico City when she was…

    • 1173 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Her independence is important, being the only woman in the book not controlled by men. ‘She was a golf champion and everyone knew her name’. This suggests she’s famous in her own right in…

    • 598 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Patria notices how “on that very rocker where [she] had nursed [her] babies that [she] saw [her] sister Minerva looking through the viewfinder of an M-1 carbine—a month ago [Patria] would not have known it from a shotgun” and how “in the pretty script [she and Mate were] taught by the nuns to writing out Bible passages” they recorded their assortment of guns (Alvarez 167-168). Alvarez combines very feminine activities with what society would define as “manly” and too violent for women to be a part of—being knowledgeable in munitions and possessing them—to illustrate the influence of courage, especially being a woman who is expected to be passive and weak and is pregnant. Alvarez also expresses the irony of women themselves hindering their own success apart from men, such as through submissive sister Dede Mirabal who “considered...politics...something for men” and followed her non-revolutionary husband (Alvarez 70, 172). Alvarez suggests through Dede that women who stick to their social role as the passive and subservient…

    • 428 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Most people, in this world, have a passion deep down inside of them that lead them to achieve what they put their heart and mind to. Fulfilling that passion is the most satisfying feeling. Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz is a well-known extraordinary figure from the colonial period. She is a great example of persevering to get through many obstacles in her life. Sor Juana developed a desire for education at a very young age and was highly noticeable in all of her literature. In the seventeenth century, it was the intellectual midpoint of Spanish colonial America. During this time Mexico City was politically and religiously the center of New Spain; the terrains went from California to Central America. In Latin American history, the church and state…

    • 1014 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Gender roles were shaped by the Domesticity and Private Spheres Ideology which said that women should devote themselves to their homes, their husbands, and their children while men were to go out and get jobs, take part in politics, and other aspects of the outside world. It was said that men and women had different functions to perform under God. Society’s peace depended on these roles and if women began taking part in men’s activities there would be crisis. Young girls were to be under the supervision of their fathers, or brothers in some cases, until they were married and then they belonged to their husbands. Married women were considered legal incompetents because they did not have a sufficient brain to participate in legal affairs. For a while people did not have a problem with this arrangement because it portrayed women as noble and superior. Around the 1850s church attendance became very low and many more women than men begin attending services. Women took over the church in a sense because while men had world affairs and politics, women did not have such commitments and so they adopted the church to have a place of their own in society.…

    • 2184 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Queen Isabella Of Spain

    • 1434 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Queen Isabella of Castile was one of the most successful queens of the Early Modern European period. The role of women in society, especially as leaders was and has been seen as limited throughout history. However Isabella’s reign as a female leader was not limiting but rather successful as she was able to assert and have independent power thus breaking the gender norms of her society. Queen Isabella of Castile had to endure a civil war to secure her place on the throne, and though by marrying Ferdinand of Aragon, unifying the crowns, she alone helped Spain become a powerful kingdom through her grandiose political visions.…

    • 1434 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Cyclist Gender Roles

    • 829 Words
    • 4 Pages

    In Bardem’s 1955 film Death of a Cyclist, the audience gets a glimpse of Francoist Spain’s perspective on the female role in society under the regime through the plot and characters that unravel during the film. As Helen Graham puts it, “Francoism projected an ultra-conservative constructions of ‘ideal’ womanhood, perceived as the fundamental guarantor of social stability” (Graham 182). This meant that Franco wanted to code all women under the regime to accept their role as caretakers, sacrificing themselves for the betterment of society. Graham goes on to say, “Franco regime targeted women because of the pivotal role they played within the family… [and the family] connected vertically with the state rather than horizontally within society……

    • 829 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the century, for example, urban, white middle-class women were told it was “woman’s nature” to be frail and demure while slave women worked alongside men in the fields. For these reasons, women’s studies scholars often describe gender norms as racial zed. Thus, we often hear of African-American women’s domineering nature, the exotic, mysterious sensuality of Asian-American woman; the Chicana woman’s stereotyped as evil, sexually uncontrollable, and betrayer of her race; and the status conscious Jewish American woman.…

    • 1621 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    During the eighteenth century, one of the utmost aspects to have in life for the Spanish in colonial New Mexico for men was honor, this was the very center of their moral system.(pg.177) Having honor was those who colonized New Mexico and conquered the Indians forcing them to submit.(pg.177) In order for one to achieve getting that respect it meant that they had to prove it to everyone and they had to see it with their own eyes, basically needing their approval. Not only did they fight for honor, but they also had to fight to maintain it depending on “brute force”.(pg.177) This essay will explore Ramon A. Gutierrez’s discussion on manhood and honor on two different levels, one of status and one of virtue.(pg.177)…

    • 385 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The observation and connection I gather about the role of women and their freedom of speech is very open and unconcerned by their husband if Contessa de Dia’s poem “Cruel Are the Pains I’ve Suffered,” from Lark in the Morning:” was written and published (Sayre, H. M. 2010). Contessa de Dia poem is really expletive and just written to the lust of her eyes, she talking like as if her husband can’t read. These female troubadours had noble backgrounds and they lived privileged lives. Women during this period also had power in that society. They had control over their land, and society was more accepting their noble women. Maybe it was of no concern because it was just feelings on paper…

    • 400 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The women pictured in Godey’s Lady’s Book show an ideal to which women aspired but in truth could not often obtain outside of the middle to upper classes. The images portrayed in this magazine represented the concept of “true womanhood”; women who were regarded as pious and domestic. They were to be the anchors of the home and the educator to children. The images displayed are of the ultimate wife and mother which were an iconic representation of the values of those who read Godey’s. The women depicted in the book looked fragile, innocent and demure. They were not fit for work in the public sphere physically as women were supposed to be frail, delicate creatures. Women were also not fit mentally or emotionally for the public sphere. They were too innocent and pure for the dangers of such pursuits as suffrage or politics.…

    • 1322 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    In a society that no longer understands the figure of the ascetic and the warrior; in which the hands of the latest aristocrats seem better fit to hold tennis rackets or shakers for cocktail mixes than swords or sceptres; in which the archetype of the virile man is represented by a boxer or by a movie star if not by the dull wimp represented by the intellectual, the college professor, the narcissistic puppet of the artist, or the busy and dirty money-making banker and the politician - in such a society it was only a matter of time before women rose up and claimed for themselves a 'personality' and a 'freedom' according to the anarchist and individualist meaning usually associated with these words. And while traditional ethics asked men and women to be themselves to the utmost of their capabilities and express with radical traits their own gender-related characteristics- the new "civilization" aims at leveling everything since it is oriented to the formless and to a stage that is truly not beyond but on this side of individualism and differentiation of the sexes.…

    • 1150 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays