The Vow as Refuge and Resistance

Sor Juana entered a convent—an institution that restricted women's freedom—as her path to greater freedom. The cloister offered her library access, intellectual community, and protection from the demands of marriage and domestic servitude that constrained most women. Her vows were simultaneously a surrender and an escape, a way of working within the system to transcend it. This paradox illuminates a key strategy for living justly in unjust worlds: sometimes the structures we inhabit can be repurposed or inhabited in unexpected ways. The vow became her tool. In modern contexts, this might mean understanding how certain roles, institutions, or even constraints can be strategically used to create space for your true work. Living justly requires recognizing when a structure that seems limiting might actually offer protection or leverage—and knowing how to use it without being used by it. Sor Juana's example teaches radical pragmatism in service of justice.