Wollstonecraft and Sor Juana: Two Women Who Thought
Mary Wollstonecraft and Sor Juana de la Cruz write in very different contexts, but both challenge the idea that women’s intellectual lives should be limited, supervised, or outright discouraged. Wollstonecraft argues from Enlightenment principles, while Sor Juana works within a convent framework that requires much more care and attention to God. Especially because in her Response of the Poet to Sor Filotea, the “female” authority figure she is responding to is actually a bishop writing under a pseudonym. Still, both make the case that women’s supposed intellectual “inferiority” is the result of social constraints rather than nature.
Wollstonecraft begins with the core Enlightenment idea that reason is universal. In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, she argues that because women share the same rational faculty as men, they share the same capacity for virtue and moral responsibility. Any appearance of irrationality is not inherent in nature, but rather a result of the broken education system that trains women to prioritize beauty, charm, and obedience over thought (Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Woman). She calls out writers like Rousseau, who claimed women were naturally suited for pleasing rather than reasoning. For Wollstonecraft, this argument doesn’t make sense because it’s contradictory: if moral and political equality are based on reason, then women need education to develop that reason. Denying them education, therefore, completely undermines the argument (Bergès, Guidebook to Wollstonecraft).
Sor Juana shares the conclusion that women are capable of intellectual work, but she reaches it through a different route. Her Respuesta a Sor Filotea responds to a bishop who published her writing without permission and then gently advised her (and let us not forget: while posing as a supportive religious woman) to focus less on secular topics. Sor Juana knows perfectly well that this supposed “Sor Filotea” is not an admiring mentor but a critic. As a result, she writes with a blend of politeness and pointed sarcasm. (Sor Juana, Response of the Poet to Sor Filotea). In her letter, she describes her lifelong desire to learn: sneaking into school as a child, trying to disguise herself as a boy to study at university, and cutting her hair when she felt she had not mastered Latin quickly enough. These details support her claim that her intellectual desire is something she could not abandon even when told to. This becomes her central argument: if resisting her desire for knowledge proved impossible, then she cannot be morally required to resist it. In her terms, “ought” implies “can,” a principle she applies to her own studies when she notes that no one can be obligated to do the impossible (Sor Juana, Response of the Poet to Sor Filotea).
Both philosophers challenge the idea that women’s education is spiritually dangerous or socially destabilizing. Wollstonecraft argues that keeping women uneducated makes them dependent, and dependence undermines virtue. Virtue, for her, must be grounded in understanding, not habit or social expectation (Wollstonecraft, Thoughts on the Education of Daughters). Sor Juana similarly points out that women are responsible for early instruction in the household. If they are kept ignorant, the entire educational foundation of the family declines. Relying on male tutors for young girls introduces risks, while relying on uneducated women limits children’s understanding. Education for women, then, is not optional but necessary (Sor Juana, Response of the Poet to Sor Filotea).
The biggest difference between Wollstonecraft and Sor Juana is the situation each is writing from. Wollstonecraft expects her arguments to be judged in a public, philosophical debate. She writes as openly as she wants, and although people disagreed with her, she wasn’t going to be punished by a religious authority for saying the wrong thing. Sor Juana does not have this freedom. She is responding to a bishop who is pretending to be a woman, advising her gently, which makes her response a little more delicate. Her tone of humility is not actually humility; it’s her way of creating a little space where she can push back without appearing rebellious (Sor Juana, Response of the Poet to Sor Filotea).
Another contrast is what each woman thinks is the purpose of education. Wollstonecraft is focused on building virtue and citizenship. She argues that people cannot be virtuous if they are trained only to obey or imitate (Wollstonecraft, Thoughts on the Education of Daughters). Sor Juana, on the other hand, emphasizes how different fields of knowledge support one another. She argues that theology cannot be understood without logic, rhetoric, music, science, or experience in everyday life. Her line that “if Aristotle had cooked, he would have written a great deal more” (Sor Juana, p.185) is funny, but it also makes a serious point: intellectual work does not happen magically, and so-called “women’s work” also produces real knowledge (Sor Juana, Response of the Poet to Sor Filotea). Her approach is less about forming good citizens and more about showing that the pursuit of understanding is interconnected and practical to everyday life.
Even though their methods differ, both philosophers argue that restricting women’s education creates contradictions. For Wollstonecraft, the contradiction is philosophical. Enlightenment thinkers claimed reason is universal, so excluding women from developing that reason doesn’t make sense. A society cannot claim to value rationality and then keep half the population uneducated (Bergès, Guidebook to Wollstonecraft). For Sor Juana, the contradiction is theological and practical. If God has given her the desire and ability to study (and if women are responsible for teaching young children), then blocking women from learning harms both the individual and the community. It also creates a spiritual problem: it would require her to deny a calling she believes she cannot ignore (Sor Juana, Response of the Poet to Sor Filotea).
Wollstonecraft and Sor Juana show two different strategies women used to defend their intellectual lives. Wollstonecraft relies on universal principles and public argument; Sor Juana uses autobiography and theology to expose the weaknesses in the arguments made against her. Both demonstrate, in their own ways, that women do not need permission to think; they only need the chance.