ABSTRACT
Included in Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s second volume of poems published in Madrid is a well-known epistolary romance (a form of ballad) with the title “In Reply to a Gentleman from Peru, Who Sent Her Clay Vessels While Suggesting She Would Better Be a Man” (Romance 48). In this poem, Sor Juana follows extravagant praise of the gentleman’s literary and ceramic efforts (and apologies for her own failings) with a promise to try to become a man, “although I judge no strength on earth can enTarquin.” Sor Juana cannot become a man and would not want to become the rapist Tarquin, but she also goes on to suggest that she is not, properly speaking, a woman.
