Alburquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999.
Endnotes to Alicia Gaspar de Alba's novel disclose the novel's inclusion
of Sor Juana's published expressions together with present-day fabrications.
The ideas, Gaspar de Alba credits, are Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz'.
A reader unschooled in Sor Juana's thought takes Gaspar de Alba at her
word, reads the story in wonder, with a growing outrage, but restrained
in a realization of possible inauthenticity.
Sor Juana's Second Dream tells a story of Sor Juana's ideas leading
up to her trial by the inquisition and the penalty she pays for her sins.
Few readers will have but passing familiarity with Juana's work and primary
sources so Gaspar de Alba scantily summarizes treatises and events, merely
names pagan authors, asserting Juana's knowledge. Given the already long
manuscript, a reader understands not including historical text or more
detail about Juana's work and sources. I wonder if there is a published
second dream or if this fancifully describes the novel?
No matter. Whether reading Sor Juana's own translated expressions, or Gaspar
de Alba's interpolations and inventions, the woman Sor Juana Inés
de la Cruz emerges larger than life, for her intellect, her power, her
endurance. Even if none of the facts are, the story inspires resistance
to misogyny, and this is Gaspar de Alba's ultimate triumph. As such, it
would be useful reading for mature girls and all males.
Reader beware that Gaspar de Alba's style does not sparkle, but this owes
to the novelist's epistolary strategy, the inherent restraint governing
speech or conversation among cloistered women, conventions of courtly speech;
this is historical ambience. The memorable courtroom scene evokes great
dramas, like Inherit the Wind or To Kill a Mockingbird. Juana
makes a great argument. The inquisitor nails her with an "Aha!". A nobleman
from the audience rises to her defense, pulls Juana to her feet, she gratefully
flexes muscles agonized from kneeling on the stone floor hours at a stretch.
The melodrama here is fun, a fit climax to the drama. The novel is long
but not plodding, still, a reader grows aware of the length. Gaspar de
Alba's denouement, as the novelist kills off dispirited Juana, sees Mexico
and the convent sink, fall into plague and depression, as if in divine
retribution.
It is fated that Sor Juana has no chance for intellectual satisfaction,
not in this life. Living in a time when it still is possible to know everything
there is to know, Sor Juana not only does, but contributes to knowledge
and the Lettered world. She readily runs afoul of local Church aristocracy.
Theocracy nurtured on the egotism of infallibility gives priests and bishopricks
of Mexico City unfettered authority to lie, cheat, steal, humiliate, silence
an uppity woman, who puts on an heroic battle. But men are half the enemy;
the women of the San Jeronimo cloister, their intrigues and petty sinfulness,
deliver Juana's daily torment.
Gaspar de Alba gratuitously grinds a familiar anti male theme common in
chicana literature, child sexual abuse. The nine year old Juana was forced
to masturbate her uncle, terrorizing the adult Juana in night sweat dreams
and feeding her revulsion of men. This anti-male propaganda aside, Gaspar
de Alba creates a richly engaging portrait of a woman it would be fun to
know. A reader readily warms to Juana's character and charm, exulting with
Juana when the court accepts her while sweeping aside the groveling uncle.
We sympathize with her sexual isolation. We will her to win when the outcome
was decided 400 years ago.
Sor Juana amazes Mexico's ruling intellectuals because of her surpassing
achievements in classical learning and because that was not readily provided
to women. Juana is a kind of a sideshow but turns the act into a profession.
The court and courtiers become her patrons, commissioning Juana to compose
ritual essays, poems, skits. In an age of oracy, literacy offered a key
to liberation. The rich and powerful paid for the words played to crowds
for entertainment and enlightenment on feast days and ceremonial encomia.
Juana's work always pleased the crowd and the patron, Juana struggled to
meet demand. Juana's artistry and sly conceits busied the nun during prayer
and chores left to others, while bringing in cash that bought real estate
and fresh foods for the convent.
But Juana earns enemies, too, growing from jealously of her genius and
gender, prejudice against her Mexican-born caste, envy of her success.
Professors and clergy resent her beating men at man's work. At thinking
and expressing, Juana always makes the final point, she is quicker and
smarter. Women and nuns resent the special treatment afforded a thinking,
writing woman. No chores, no schedule, don't look closely for scourge marks.
The prideful archbishop hates Juana's religious rhetoric most of all because
he refuses to allow persuasion by a woman against a man.
The cloister's domestic life gives a modern reader shudders. Cold water
baths, body hangups, politics, chisme. Gaspar de Alba surprises her reader
with a short-tempered Sor Juana who slaps around her slaves and verbally
abuses her employees. Faith means leather scourges slapped across welted
shoulders while chanting Hail Marys to ward off evil. Hair shirts stink
of sweat and horse. Forbidden books and secret hiding places. "Grr, there
goes my heart's abhorrence". In the ultimate torture, the resentful sisters
confiscate Juana's writing tools and books, forcing her to wander the courtyard
stroking songbird feathers, longing for a quill.
Second Dream is not history, it is a love story; the love of ideas,
love of expression, woman love. The razon d'estar for the novel is its
story of Sor Juana's sexuality. Tantalized by historical documents characterized
as love letters by a woman to a woman, the novelist set out to explore
the times in Juana's life that she expresses her lesbian self. While some
might scorn the novel's delight in Sor Juana's sexuality, Gaspar de Alba
adds a libidinous context that makes Juana's humanity all the more real,
the tragedy of Sor Juana's life even more outrageous.
Juana's sexual awareness, as with her intellectual life, offers a story
of deep frustration. Her two condessas, the loves of her life; her affectionate
scribe; her awareness of her body -- all untouchable yet each an obsession.
Juana composes her greatest love lyrics to the condesa of Juana's youth,
finds fulfillment in the new condesa's lips and fingers and legs. The sex
scene with the scribe fills with similar erotic details. Gaspar de Alba
wants her reader to understand the depth of Juana's desires, her gratitude
in their expression. And Juana's understanding that these will be the nun's
only two physical gratifications in her lifetime.
Gaspar de Alba invites the reader to see Juana's passion sublimated into
her publications. The reader is free to disregard historical issues and
enjoy the work for its story of this remarkable and notable woman, succeeding
on her own terms even as her entire world implodes onto her.