Early Modern Women’s Writing and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz by Stephanie Merrim (review)

Abstract

226 Reviews extremely fertile methodological approach to ltalian travel literature that might well be extended to the ltalian tradition at large, going back to Marco Polo and early modern ltalian travel literature, thus providing a powerful and timely antidote, par? ticularly in an age of 'globalizing literary studies', to the ltalian critical tradition's aversion to travel. University of Notre Dame Theodore J.Cachey Jr Early Modern Women's Writing and Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz. By Stephanie Merrim . Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. 1999. xliv + 323 pp. ?17.95. ISBN 0-85323-784-0. This is a very important contribution to Women's Writing studies in early modern Spain and Latin America, a research field that has become increasingly popular in recent years. Stephanie Merrim, who has already published on Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, proposes a comparative study between the Mexican nun and other Spanish, French, and English women writers of her time, including Catalina de Erauso, Maria de Zayas, Mme de Lafayette, Anne Bradstreet, and Margaret Lucas Cavendish. To contextualize this project, it should be said that its interpretation upholds the view of her-storyagainst his-tory (p. xxxviii), with all the positive and problematic impli? cations of this approach. Covering a broad geographical frame, this book could be of use to academies in both the Hispanic and the European fields. This accounts for the translation of Spanish prose quotations from Sor Juana, Erauso, and Zayas into English, and although this makes it available forEuropean readers, fromthe perspec? tive of a Spanish-speaker it seems a shame not to offerthe Spanish authorial version alongside. Notwithstanding this small criticism, the comparative approach adopted by Mer? rim should be applauded. Hispanic literature does not need to be studied separately from the main European field (as it used to be in the past), and the author of this book shows convincingly enough that the feminine Hispanic Baroque has more in common with the rest of Europe than not. In the concrete case of Sor Juana, Merrim proves this assertion to be true: the scholar manages effectively to view the nun 'without walls', as she herself proposes in a useful metaphor in the introduction to her book, to situate the Mexican writer's works 'within a larger context' that will allow us to see 'the enhanced dialogue of commonalities that emerges from the interplay' (p. xv). Merrim's study tries to demonstrate how Sor Juana and other women of her time adapt the Baroque's main devices and strategies (created by men) to their own socalled feminist purposes. It is the same procedure that she had identified in a previous study (Feminist Perspectives on Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991)) and other scholars like M. L. Bretz (Voices, Silences and Echoes: A Theory of the Essay and the Critical Reception of Naturalism in Spain (London: Tamesis, 1992)) recognize in works written two centuries later, i.e. the manipulation of a prevailing ideology to defend a position, the strategy of assuming a man-created code in order to undermine it. Women situate themselves within the ideology ofpower with the purpose oftwisting itsmale forms. In this way,forexample, Sor Juana quotes Saint Paul, interpreting his unfeminist assertions in her favour (p. 203). It is the same subtle sabotage of dominant male discourse that Kathryn Joy McKnight perceived in The Mystic of Tunja: The Writings of Madre Castillo 1671-1742 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1997), dealing with Madre Castillo's work. Merrim shows how convents are 'written' in order to provide women not only with a place to escape from man, but also to fulfilthemselves and project an inner and safe MLRy 99. i, 2004 227 space. Canonical values are thus used to proclaim anti-canonical arguments. Once more, the official excuse of defending woman's education (in her role as guardian of her children) is evoked in order to achieve the more important goal of access to books and knowledge. This appealing thesis is accompanied by the attractive titles of the book's chapters, two of which, 'Women on Love', referto D. H. Lawrence's novel. How far can we believe that this was being...