Sor Juana’s poetry addresses depictions of love and images of women. I think that like her letter to Sor Filotea, she uses this poetry to give a voice to women and challenge traditional attitudes of men. She also displays her skill in writing poetry to show anybody reading that women are capable of writing brilliantly in such an elevated form. I believe that poetry is actually more enjoyable for Sor Juana to write than prose is. She even mentioned in the letter that she thinks in verse and it comes naturally to her. In writing in verse, she might feel freer in her expression, plus composing poetry makes her an artist of sorts. There is also a lyrical element to poetry that prose does not have. Writing poetry allows Sor Juana to apply her musical talent and rhythm to words and lines. Thus, she can play with the meanings and sounds of words without having to provide explanation.
I thought poem 145 was interesting because it seems to be referring to women, and how men think of them. It begins by calling the woman “an object,” that is “a painted snare” which is referring to how women make themselves up in order to capture men, like the “cunning trap to snare your sense.” As the sentence before the poem states, Sor Juana “endeavors to expose the praises recorded in a portrait,” so this poem is about flattery men use on women too. Flattery is also mentioned specifically in the poem in its attempts to “overlook the horrors of the years.” So in this case, flattery is like a form of deception that men use to idealize women and make them something that men want them to be. “Philosophical Satire” (poem 92) also discusses images of women that men have. This attacks the double standard applied to women by “foolish and unreasoning men.” Because of men’s unrealistic expectations of women, they are to blame for any “faults” women have. Sor Juana shows in this poem, like Zayas did in her stories, that men “insist that woman be a sultry Thais while you woo her; a true Lucretia once she’s won.” In other words, men want women to abide by the way they define love, which is to have women be whatever they (men) want them to be (a whore or a virgin).
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