ABSTRACT
Discalced Carmelite convents were among the few places in early modern Spain in which women from radically different backgrounds interacted as equals. Teresa de Jesús, the daughter of a converso merchant, grew up in a large, comfortable household where girls as well as boys acquired literacy. María de San José was the ward of a duchess and raised in a palace, where she received a broad, humanistic education. Ana de San Bartolomé was a peasant with a tendency toward reclusion; she received no formal education. All three women faced difficult issues when young: spiritual struggles, social pressures, and questions of identity. In the convent, they may have discovered that they shared some common, unifying experiences.
