Sor Juana Day One

1. In the beginning of the letter, Sor Juan a definitely expresses both humility and superiority. She expresses humility when she says, "I can answer nothing more to the first obstacle than that I am entirely unworthy of your gaze... I can offer nothing more than amazement, instead of thanks, declaring that I am unable to thank you for the slightest part of what I owe you. It is not false humility." She expresses superiority when she says, " “For ever since the light of reason first dawned on me, my inclination to letters was marked by such passion and vehemence that neither the reprimands of others (for I have received many) nor reflections of my own (there have been more than a few) have sufficed to make me abandon my pursuit of this native impulse that God Himself bestowed on me.”  Since she is a nun, she knows her place and knows the doctrine she is to follow. At the same time I think she is proud of the fact that she is a nun and feels she should be honored in some sense. Since the letter she is responding to is from man I think she has to take extra care. While I do see a sense of sarcasm in some of her writing, I think she had to write differently than if she were responding to a letter written by a woman. She uses sarcasm to convey how remarkable she is instead of just gloating about her intelligence and education. She only learns so that she can "become less ignorant." The way she says this shows that she is proud of her intelligence yet knows not to boast about it, especially when she is responding to to a criticism by a man.


2. A quote I found interesting was " I do not study in order to write, nor far less in order to teach (which would be boundless arrogance in me), but simply to see; whether by studying I may become less ignorant. This is my answer, these are my feelings." Isn't that the entire point of learning? To become less ignorant? The way I read this was that she was trying to suppress her intelligence. 
Another quote was, "I began to study Latin, in which I believe it took fewer than twenty lessons. And my interest was so intense, that although in women (and especially in the very bloom of youth) the natural adornment of hair is so esteemed, I would cut off four to six finger lengths of my hair, measuring how long it had been before." Here she is kind of boasting of her intelligence, that it only took her 20 lessons to learn Latin. That she defied what women normally did.