As we turn to the liminal spaces of the home, such as the window, we see the expression of similar misgivings about false appearances that prompted allegations that women would use the coach window to flirt or veiling practices to obscure their identity. The window is a space commonly associated with prostitution; the window has a long history as a signifying site in transactional sex dating back to the medieval period at least that is still in evidence in modern red-light districts such as that of Amsterdam. Early modern Spanish prostitutes frequently used signals in the window to advertise their services clandestinely. For example, the term ramera, which entered the Spanish language as a synonym for prostitute in the fifteenth century, derives from ‘la costumbre de colocar un ramo en las puertas de sus casas para indicar que [las prostitutas] ofrecian sus servicios’ [the custom of placing a sprig in the windows of their houses to indicate that they [prostitutes] offered their services].

Spanish inns and taverns also adopted this advertisement system, displaying a small branch in the window to announce the availability of transactional sex within. In La Lozana andaluza, the protagonist references this etymology as she shops for a house in which to establish her trade; when Rampin points out a latticework for sale she asks how he knows it is being sold. He responds ‘porque tiene aquel ramico verde puesto’ [because it has that green sprig placed there], to which Lozana replies that to advertise their brothel ‘mejor sera poner el ramo sin la celosia, y venderemos mejor’ [it is better to put up a sprig without the latticework, and we will sell better]. This assertion of the vital role played by the ramo (sprig) to the advertisement of rameras (prostitutes) and the many others like it that appear frequently in literature on prostitution demonstrates the importance of windows to the advertisement of the flesh trade.

In this chapter, I argue that pícaras use the window to mediate between competing demands for secrecy and exposure, drawing on its historical role in seduction and erotic display. I begin by describing windows’ evolving architectural role in the early modern house