Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, towering figure of viceregal culture in New Spain, is remembered as a poet, as a woman, and as a nun. While she has been subjected to careful scrutiny and evaluation as a poet and as a woman, her role as a nun has received much less attention. This, despite the fact that she lived most of her life as a nun, and that, in her own words, her profession gave her the freedom she wished to devote herself totally to writing