 With few exceptions, women under Spanish colonial rule were not encouraged to write, and women who did write typically learned to do so on their own and knowing their work would not find acceptance from the men who dominated the literary tradition.Fear of rejection or persecution may have been what prompted Clarinda to adopt a pseudonym.However, restrictions on women interested in literature were looser in the colonies than in Europe, and Clarinda seems to have been granted access to the literary circles in colonial Peru.