Exploring Emotions in Sor Juan in'es de la Cruz's Poetry - Literary Analysis Essay

Introduction

Poetry responses are powerful tools that pass a message in society. Emotions that the poet indicates the seriousness of a message and how the audience is supposed to take it. Emotions provoke the reader hence enabling them to understand literature. This essay discusses emotions in Sor Juan in'es de la Cruz replies: Reply, self-pity and anger. It discusses the primary importance of one emotion in the poem.

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Self-Pity Emotion

The emotion of self-pity in the poem can be seen in a statement of response: But as silence is a negative thing, though it explains a great deal through the very stress of not explaining. We must assign some meaning to it, that we may understand what the silence.."(De la Cruz). This response is a cry of pity by the poet on the women for being disregarded by society. She felt that society was secretly teaching women, to be helpless. The pity in her emotions is because of what she feels is a dominating male environment. The dominant male society has made it hard for women to get educated but remain back home take care of home chores such as taking care of children and other house chores.

The emotion is dominant because she feels that because she is a woman, the society is not supporting her to achieve her goals she responds in a section that "No teacher, besides books themselves). This is her concern over her attempts to learn by herself as no teacher is willing to teach her. This is what other women encountered. The boys of her age during the earlier times were attending schools and getting to be taught by the best available teachers. The poet made it on her own because of her desire and passion to know. It is a pity that society was unfair.

Angry and Contemptuous Emotion

The emotion in the poem Reply is contemptuous. In her poem Reply? The poet writes a reply to the Bishop of Puebla and addresses him as Sor Filotea de la Cruz.by calling him this name, the poet is contesting the bishop's assertation that he should stop focusing more on the secular teachings and instead focus on the religious ones. The fact that the poet looks humble at the start and makes a confession that in her state she is not worthwhile to be speaking to the Bishop, is a sarcastic move. The poet's voice is full of contempt as she explains her background and her desire to understand the wisdom of the world as young as three years old. She asserts that her studies of secular wisdom have made her look at the religious issues from a different perspective and discovered a main point of relation. An example is her response "Without logic, how could I possibly know the general and specific methods by which Holy Scriptures are written?". This response is more of an expression of anger as she recounts how a nun came to torment her saying that her studies were astray from religion and unholy. Her contemptuous response is that even Jesus Christ was tormented using a crown made of thorns just because he too had wisdom. Her contempt for the ridicule being shown to women is her era can be felt when she openly opens her letter with: I am not as smart as other.'(Torres, 2013)This statement is a sarcastic one as she portrays Intelligence hard to be found during her times. This use of sarcastic remarks is meant to be a way of fighting for freedom for many women who have been enslaved by the men chauvinism. Her emotion is of contempt and ridicule can be read in her statement as she is even capable of knowledge than men. She is confident about a woman's ability to build society hence provides a framework of the abilities of an educated woman.

The emotion of anger dominates the reply when she has to criticize the Catholic Church for being partial in its judgments. In her letter, the catholic church of the 1690s is depicted as a male-dominated church. It was the leader of the idea of subordinating women as a mandate to them. Her anger is clear in the way she had to cope up with hardships to be successful. She says "I made myself a rule, that if by the time it had grown back to the same length, I will cut off my hair off again to punish my dull-whiteness"(Torres,2013) The response is an angry one, as she refers to her targets, which she had to achieve even without being recognized. It was her will to be the best for herself that made her work extra harder

The dominant emotion in the response of Juana is anger. From the mention of what she explains as the expectations that men have over women. The reader detects that there is a sense of anger being directed to the men. According to Juana men are creatures who are always emphasizing the need to be perfect and yet sets rules which makes it harder each day to achieve that desire to be the best one can be. She finds it hard and weird that men are contradicting themselves when they tell the women to be strong and stand for their rights and at the same time request the same women to be gentle and calm. She is angered by the men who ask women to remain virgins and yet are the ones who are always celebrating to have a sexual experience, even away from the refrains of a marriage. The poet expresses her anger on the behavior of men of quarreling over little matters that can be easily solved over a conversation with their spouses. She describes them as cruel and rude as they cannot accept their proposal to a woman who gets turned down. Juana observes that a woman is branded as rude if she says no to a man and yet branded promiscuous if she accepts it.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Juana uses the dominant emotion of anger to express contempt over the injustices that the men in the society advocated. She uses several examples that indicate the position of women. They have no access to education which according to the poet is the foundation of a better future. Other emotions can tell the intention of the response. Self -pity is seen in instances like the narration of the early age of Juana and her struggles to study on her own without a teacher.

Work Cited

Torres, Isabel. Love Poetry in the Spanish Golden Age: Eros, Eris, and Empire. Vol. 328. Boydell & Brewer Ltd, 2013.