The Tyranny of Domestic Enclosure

Sor Juana's confinement within the convent—presented as protection but functioning as imprisonment—reveals how libertarian justice must recognize spatial control as a form of expropriation. The enclosure of women within domestic and religious spaces denies them property rights over their own time, movement, and intellectual development. This concept examines how patriarchal institutions use architecture, custom, and law to restrict access to resources, education, and public participation. Sor Juana's fight against the boundaries of her cell parallels any libertarian struggle against territorial confinement and movement restriction. The tyranny of enclosure operates before economic injustice: it prevents the accumulation of knowledge, property, and autonomy itself. Her letters and defenses articulate how freedom requires the right to move, to work, to learn, and to participate in public intellectual life without institutional gatekeepers determining which spaces belong to women.