After reading the text assigned for this journal entry, I find that I am particularly drawn to the poems and essays by Sister Juana Inés de la Cruz, especially Poem 2 (Matthews, DeWitt Platt, 2014). The hypocrisy of what the anticpated gender roles for women of the time period are what initially drew me towards this work and it also prompted me to think about how much or how little expected roles for women today in certain cultures. The poem also mirrors the historical information in the main text for the class by indicating that while women may have been influential and held positions of power or esteem that for the majority of women the sentiments echoed in Poem 2 by were the how women were viewed in society by men of the time period. The contradictions about how women are perceived in Poem 2 seem so blatant and candid considering the time during which the work was created, especially the final stanza in which Sister Juana Inés de la Cruz compares the contradictions of the expected roles of women that were held by some men of the age to the ultimate evil, the devil. I am surprised that this work survived considering Sister Juana Inés de la Cruz’s strong connections to the Church and my perception of the Church and their willingness to censor and ban works that didn’t not agree with or questioned the validity of their structure. Even though during this age the Church did have women as part of its structure, women were to remain silent in their worship.