Introduction
Women in 17th-century colonial America and New Spain lived within highly restrictive patriarchal societies. Expected to remain silent in public spheres, they were relegated to domestic roles and denied formal education or professional opportunities.
Religious and social authorities viewed women as intellectually inferior and morally suspect. Yet despite these constraints, three remarkable women—Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Anne Bradstreet, and Mary Rowlandson—found ways to make their voices heard. Through poetry, religious defense, and captivity narrative, each carved out space for female expression and challenged societal expectations about women’s capabilities and roles.
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648-1695)
Born Juana Inés de Asbaje in colonial Mexico, Sor Juana entered a convent to pursue intellectual life rather than marriage. She became New Spain’s most celebrated poet and playwright, writing extensively on love, philosophy, and women’s rights. Her famous “Reply to Sor Philotea” (1691) defended women’s right to education and intellectual pursuits against church criticism. Historically significant as the first feminist voice in the Americas, she challenged both religious and secular authorities through her writings.
Sor Juana’s convent cell became an intellectual salon where she collected over 4,000 books—the largest private library in colonial Mexico. She wrote plays, sonnets, and philosophical treatises, often using wit and irony to critique male hypocrisy. Her poem “You Foolish Men” brilliantly exposes the double standards men apply to women, asking why they corrupt women and then blame them for being corrupted. Her intellectual defiance eventually provoked church authorities to force her to sell her library and abandon writing in her final years.
Interesting fact: Sor Juana taught herself to read at age three and reportedly learned Latin in just twenty lessons. She once cut her hair short as self-punishment when she failed to learn something quickly enough, believing her head didn’t deserve ornamentation if it couldn’t master knowledge.
Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672)
The first published female poet in America, Bradstreet arrived in Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630. Initially writing private poems about domestic life, faith, and family, she gained recognition when her brother-in-law secretly published her work in London as “The Tenth Muse” (1650). Her poetry skillfully navigated Puritan expectations while asserting her intellectual capabilities. She paved the way for future American women writers and demonstrated that domestic experience could be worthy poetic subject matter.
Bradstreet’s poetry reveals a complex relationship with Puritan doctrine—she questioned divine justice while maintaining faith, and cleverly used acceptable feminine topics like motherhood to explore deeper philosophical themes. Her poem “The Author to Her Book” uses the metaphor of a mother correcting her child to describe her relationship with her published work, simultaneously showing modesty and asserting ownership of her intellectual creation. Despite raising eight children and managing household duties, she continued writing, creating a body of work that balances personal emotion with public religious expression.
Interesting fact: Bradstreet’s house burned down in 1666, destroying her library of over 800 books—an enormous collection for the time and evidence of her exceptional education and intellectual curiosity.
Mary Rowlandson (1637-1711)
A Puritan minister’s wife, Rowlandson was captured during King Philip’s War in 1676 and held by Narragansett Indians for eleven weeks. Her account, “A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration” (1682), became America’s first bestseller and established the captivity narrative genre. Through her writing, she claimed authority to interpret her own religious experience and survival, challenging typical gender roles by positioning herself as both victim and spiritual narrator.
Rowlandson’s narrative reveals remarkable psychological complexity—she simultaneously demonizes her captors while acknowledging their occasional kindness, and struggles with guilt over her own survival when others died. Her detailed observations of Native American daily life provide invaluable ethnographic information, even as she frames everything through Puritan theology. The narrative’s popularity stemmed from its combination of adventure, religious testimony, and insights into frontier life. Rowlandson portrays herself as both suffering saint and resourceful survivor, learning to navigate between cultures while maintaining her Puritan identity.
Interesting fact: Rowlandson’s narrative was so popular that it went through fifteen editions in her lifetime and was translated into multiple languages, making her arguably America’s first female literary celebrity.
Conclusion
These three women transformed personal experience into public expression, using their writing to claim intellectual and spiritual authority in societies that denied them such roles.
Their works demonstrate how individual conscience and the courage to speak truth—even when it conflicts with social expectations—can create lasting change and inspire future generations to find and use their own voices.