Teresa de Avila: Lettered Woman (review)

Teresa de Avila: A Lettered Woman is an engaging exploration of Teresa as a person and reformer, as seen through the lens of her extant letters—over 450 of them. In this study, Mujica allows the letters to become the sole focus of inquiry, supported by Teresa's other works and various contextual aids. The beauty of the book is that for the first time, Teresa's letters are given the kind of attention and consideration they deserve. As Mujica explains at the outset, these letters "reveal her day-to-day struggles, her frustrations, her joy, her sense of humor, her temper, her compassion." (x) Although readers of Teresa's works have probably always thought of her as personable and expressive, Mujica's study provides more substance to Teresa's intentions, her perceptions, the lived experiences of the cloistered Carmelite women (whose idiosyncrasies can sometimes elude us through the walls of time and space), and the multitude of challenges they faced. In the end Mujica leaves us with a fine "portrait of extraordinary courage, ability, and shrewdness" (xi) that will challenge and inspire.

The book is divided into six chapters. The first, "From Teresa de Ahumada to Saint Teresa," is biographical and contextual. The second, "Teresa de Jesús: Woman of Letters," is a review of the epistolary genre and Teresa's particular contributions, along with stylistic and rhetorical analysis. The third, "God's Warrior and Her Epistolary Weapons," is a detailed study of the guts of the Carmelite reform and the role Teresa's letters had in extending, protecting, and defending it. The fourth chapter, "Correspondence and Correspondents," reviews the extant letters and describes more qualitatively the relationships Teresa cultivated with four of Teresa's major correspondents (i.e., the four people who received the largest percentage of Teresa's remaining letters. Here, of course, we are left to lament in silence the tragic loss of Teresa's letters to John of the Cross). The fifth chapter, "Letter-Writing as Self-Representation," describes the various roles that Teresa had to adopt over the course of the Carmelite reform, from foundress to administrator, to "mother general," educator, legislator, and diplomat. It is in both the third chapter and this fifth chapter that Mujica engages more explicitly the issues of authority, diplomacy, and rhetorical strategy that have been of such keen interest over the past few decades of Teresian scholarship. Chapter Six, "Forging Sainthood: Teresa's Letters as Relics," looks at the posthumous influence of Teresa and the re-creation of her as a person and as a saint. In each chapter, readers are given carefully chosen citations of Teresa's letters along with thought-provoking analysis that leads to a greater sense of Teresa's overall influence, character, and contributions.

There are a few occasions where I wish Mujica had continued to press the implications of some of her observations. For example, she notes on page 107: "It is significant that Teresa had had Jesuit confessors. She had probably made the Spiritual Exercises and so would have been familiar with the kind of collaborative arrangement between priest and directee intrinsic to Jesuit spiritual practice." Although Mujica develops a sense of Teresa's "collaborative relationship with [Jerónimo] Gracián" over the next few pages, there is probably more to be observed about how Teresa was able to take an Ignatian approach to spiritual direction and develop it into a realm of mystical theology that the Jesuits themselves did not always reach, theoretically or practically.

Reading Teresa through her letters, through Mujica's eyes, allows those already familiar with Teresa to engage in a deeper investigation of the theory and praxis of prayer and the mystical life or to explore new contextual aspects of religious reform. Mujica's admiration for Teresa's acumen, dedication, and strategic prowess brings an enthusiasm and energy to the text itself. Mujica makes observations with a sort of crisp precision that resonates with the assessments of others. Yet the engagement...