What hints are there in “Respuesta a Sor Filotea” that indicate that Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz is responding to some criticism?

In “Respuesta a Sor Filotea” by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz,
there are quite a few references that show that she was responding to criticism when she
wrote it.

In one case, Sor Juana humbles herself by stating
that she is not a learned person (untrue), and declares that she does not want to get in
trouble with the Church:

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What understanding do I possess, what studies,
what subject matter, or what instruction...? They can leave such things to those who
understand them; as for me, I want no trouble with the Holy Office, for I am but
ignorant and tremble lest I utter some ill-sounding proposition or twist the true
meaning of some passage.

Sor
Juana explains that she has received many "reprimands," that God has given her the gift
of intelligence, and that she has prayed that God would diminish her "intellect" so that
she can better do God's work—and only God's work. This indicates to
me that all she has and is struggling to confine what she does—defending that God has
given her a need to study and learn. As a nun, in that God has given her a gift, it
could only be condemnation on someone else's part that would make her ask God to take
away some part of the blessing he felt appropriate to give her. She also alludes to the
idea within society that a woman with too much knowledge is
dangerous.

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For ever since the light of reason first dawned
in me, my inclination to letters was marked by such passion and vehemence that neither
the reprimands of others (for I have received many) nor reflections of my own (there
have been more than a few) have sufficed to make me abandon my pursuit of this native
impulse that God Himself bestowed on me. His Majesty knows why and to what end He did
so, and He knows that I have prayed that he snuff out the light of my intellect, leaving
only enough to keep His Law. For more than that is too much, some would say, in a
woman...

Sor Juana goes on to
note that while she has tried to change, she has been unable to escape her greatest
enemy: herself.

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I thought I was fleeing myself, but --- woe is
me! --- I brought myself with me, and brought my greatest enemy in my inclination to
study...

Sor Juana's use of
the word "transgression" in her question directly challenges a critic as to what she has
done wrong:

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Then where is my transgression, if I refrain even
from that which is permissible to women --- to teach by writing --- because I know
myself to lack the abundant talent needed for
it...?

There is also a
defensive note in the following with the use of the word "crime" as written by Sor
Juana:

If my
crime lies in the "Letter Worthy of
Athena"...

Additional phrases
in her writing of “Respuesta a Sor Filotea” create a tone of defense against
criticism:

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Then what harm can verses
cause...For their misuse is no fault of the art...And if the
evil lies in their being used by a
woman...

Sor Juana did
receive a letter of praise and criticism which prompted her to
write “Respuesta a Sor Filotea.” Though it was written ostensibly by another poetess, it
actually came from a bishop who suggested that she stop writing for a non-religious
("secular") world and devote herself to her faith. She sold her books—said to number
about four thousand. Though greatly admired as a writer, she removed herself from the
public arena and, while seeing to the needs of some fellow nuns who had become ill from
an epidemic, she too succumbed to the same illness and died at the age of
forty-four.