lackritzj 's review for:

informative

"The lax sexual morality of the Mexican people is surely a legacy of New Spain.  It is unwise to condemn it: if machismo is a tyranny that darkens relations between man and woman, erotic freedom illumines them." p 71
Paz asserts that Sor Juana had no relationship with her father and that her love poems involve more imaginary lover than a real one.  Her expressions for women merely reflected her time  of complex sentiments. Paz does not perceive lesbianism.  And he believes that her baroque style poems are in no way confessional.  Pax also believed that as a self taught scholar she concealed the fact that her knowledge was second hand.  (It seems he did not know about Aquinas who copied things wholesale.
Paz was convinced that we do not know if the relationship between Sor Juana and Vicereine Maria Luisa was sapphic but he is certain that it was chaste.