A House of Words:
Estrella's Linguistic Development and Her Relation to the Barn
Patrick Mooney
English 31AC
November 9, 2001
The barn near the family's home in Under the Feet of Jesus seems, at first, to be a puzzling building. It is emotionally significant for several of the characters, especially Estrella; it is mentioned in odd places in the text; it is mentioned in the very first sentence of the novel; and the novel's final scene, in which Estrella climbs to the roof of the barn, is difficult to interpret and fit into the context of the rest of the novel. Although the barn is clearly a significant building, it is difficult to see exactly what its significance is.
This problem is complicated by the fact that the barn signifies different things to different characters. To Perfecto, it is primarily a potential source of income, and is sometimes also a threat to Petra's children or a source of tension with Estrella. To Alejo and Gumecindo, the barn is merely a location near which they must pass to get where they are going; at most, it provides them some shelter from the vision of others while they are engaged in their theft of fruit. Although these are important functions, none of them is closely tied to the novel's primary focus of concern, which is Estrella.
Estrella has a much more interesting relationship to the barn than Perfecto or the cousins do. It is not only a potential source of income, as it is to Perfecto, and a locus of tension between the two of them, although it is both of these things to her at times; it is not only a place of shelter for her, as it is for Alejo and Gumecindo, although she sometimes goes there to get away from a troublesome life. Although the barn represents all of these things to Estrella, it also does more than merely represent these things. The barn, for Estrella, becomes more than merely a plot device that allows the narrative to progress -- it becomes a concrete manifestation of her relation to language. The changes in Estrella's relationship to the barn parallel the changing nature of her relationship to and ability to use language. The final scene in the book can be understood in terms of this metaphor, as can the planned destruction of the barn.
The explicit connection of a barn with language occurs only once in the novel. This happens after a day of work in the fields, when Estrella and Alejo are sharing a bottle of cola. The scene is focalized through Estrella; her actions and feelings are described this way:
Estrella pointed to the bottle because she wanted to tell him how good she felt but didn't know how to build the house of words she could invite him into. That was real good, she said, and they looked at one another and waited. Build rooms as big as barns. [...] Wide-open windows where she could put candlelights and people from across the way would point at the glow and not feel so alone in the night. (Viramontes 70-1)
There are several aspects of this passage that are noteworthy. The first is that language is explicitly connected with a building -- language is first made into "a house of words," and that house is then described as composed of rooms "as big as barns." The second noteworthy aspect of the passage is that Estrella conceives that this house of words is a place that can offer comfort to others ("people from across the way would [...] not feel so alone in the night") and that can be shared with others (she wants to invite Alejo into the "house of words"). Finally, it is worth noting that Estrella sees herself actively working linguistically to comfort and engage with others; her desire to build a "house of words" is not something that she merely wants to do for herself, but rather something that serves a social function. (This is a continual development throughout the novel: She is constantly concerned for her siblings and for Alejo, and her concern becomes universalized at the end of the novel when she "believed her heart powerful enough to summon home all those who strayed.") (176)
This passage is not, of course, conclusive proof by itself that the barn represents Estrella's relationship to language -- especially because the actual barn that exists concretely in the novel is not mentioned in it. (The barn mentioned in the passage above is not an actual barn at all; it is simply a barn without details that exists in a metaphor.) However, the passage above, with its relationship between a hypothetical, abstract barn and language, is instructive and informs a discussion of Estrella's relationship with the concrete barn near her family's home. An examination of each of Estrella's major contacts with the barn will show that, in each case, the way in which she acts in and on the barn reflects her relationship to language.
Estrella's first contact with the barn comes almost immediately after the beginning of the book. (In fact, the first thing that the children do when they arrive at their new home at the new labor is discover the barn.) Her initial impressions of the barn are that it seems "strangely vacant" -- there is an "absence" that "clung heavy" -- and that it is a source of anxiety: When the barn door collapses and birds that live in the barn fly out, the girls react more strongly than they might be expected to react if they had been comfortable in the situation. (9-10) This corresponds exactly to Estrella's initial reaction to written language: "The alphabet she could not decipher" is described as "foreign and strange" (devoid of familiarity) and is associated with the schools for migrant children, which have been a source of embarrassment to her. (24-5) Although the novel does not let the reader know how much time passed between the beginning of Estrella's literacy and the time when she first encounters the barn, the two events are closely associated in two ways. Most obviously, they are associated metonymically by their proximity to each other in the text of the work. The passages are also associated by being described in similar language. Both the section describing Estrella's discovery of the barn and the section describing the beginning of her literacy refer, over and over, to beginnings, and they do this by repeatedly using words associated with beginnings: "first," "begin," "start." In describing Estrella's discovery of the barn, Viramontes writes, "Estrella came upon the barn first" and "Estrella offered her head first." Morning, the beginning of day, is also mentioned. (9-10) In describing the beginning of Estrella's literacy, Viramontes writes, "when Estrella first came upon Perfecto's red tool chest," "for the first time, Estrella realized words could become as excruciating as rusted nails," "start with the lowest hinge," and "she began to read." Perfecto's birth -- another beginning -- is also mentioned. (24-6)
The association of emptiness, strangeness, and pain with the beginning of Estrella's literacy is hardly surprising: She is learning a new skill, and a difficult, abstract one at that. Estrella quickly becomes comfortable with her new linguistic skill, however, as can been seen from the second major interaction she has with the barn. This interaction, which occurs quickly after her identification of language with a house in which people can dwell, interact, and be comfortable, comes when Perfecto asks her to help him tear the barn down. In her earlier interactions with Perfecto on the subject of the barn she raised non-germane objections ("You're not my papa") when she was dissatisfied with his pronouncements about it. (27) She is now comfortable enough with the expression of her ideas and feelings that she objects to his pronouncements about the barn by raising issues specifically tied to the conversation at hand. For instance, she objects that he should find someone else to do it, that his request of her is unfair, and that she doesn't believe him; but, even more significantly, she also raises a specific objection to his claim that "people stay away" from the barn. (75) This engagement with the actual terms of discussion shows a willingness and an ability to participate linguistically. When she visits the barn again at the end of the second chapter, her interaction with it is fundamentally different that it was at the beginning of the novel:
Now unafraid, she walked to the center of the barn where the chain suspended in an almost unnatural way. Everything else belonged [...] She took hold of its end, yanked it like a bell ringer, lightly at first to test it, then jerked it with all her muscle, then jumped out of the way in case the chain was not hooked securely. (90)
Rather than poking her head in and being startled at the exit of a group of birds, she is comfortable in the barn, and interacts with it; the narrative emphasizes that she is "now unafraid." As was true of language in her conversation about the barn with Perfecto earlier in the chapter, she engages in the barn on its own terms and explores its workings and limits; she performs various actions to see what will happen when she does so.
The development of her relation to the barn (and to language) at the end of chapter three is brief, but interesting. Estrella has previously progressed from a lack of basic competence with language to an ability to engage herself in a conversation on its own terms. At the end of chapter three, she shows that she has developed a new skill: barter. Again, this is specifically tied to the barn: She offers to help Perfecto tear the barn down if he uses the money to take Alejo to the doctor. (126) The development of an additional linguistic skill is interesting, as is the fact that it is connected to the concrete-objective symbol that represents her relation to language, but there is another aspect of this development that is just as important. This aspect is the fact that, for the first time, Estrella uses language successfully to alter the state of affairs around her. For the first time, she is successfully persuasive. The fact that the matter under discussion with Perfecto involves the destruction of the symbol of her linguistic ability also foreshadows an important change that occurs in the last thirty pages of the novel. This important change is Estrella's progression from words to action.
There is no direct interaction with the barn in the fourth chapter; this is the first and only chapter of the novel without some sort of physical encounter between Estrella and the symbolic building. This is also the chapter in which Estrella affects her situation through action, rather than through discourse. This is carefully portrayed in the narrative as necessary: The family repeatedly offers to barter Perfecto's services for the medical services rendered to Alejo; these attempts fail to persuade the nurse to engage with the family on its own economic terms, to sympathize with their situation. Finally, Estrella threatens the nurse:
I'll smash these windows first, then all these glass jars if you don't give us back our money! [said Estrella.]
You listen here! [said the nurse.]
Estrella slammed the crowbar down on the desk, shattering the school pictures of the nurse's children, sending the pencils flying to the floor [...] Estrella knocked the folders which spread like cards on the floor. [...] Estrella held out her hand, palm up.
The nurse stepped forward gingerly and removed the tin box from the top drawer of the desk. [...] Estrella counted nine dollars and seven cents. (149-50)
Estrella attempts to solve the problem with words up until she sees that it is completely impossible; even when she threatens violence, she still gives the nurse a chance to resolve the situation without any physical destruction. The nurse fails to allow the situation to be resolved in this way, however. Estrella has become competent in the use of language by this point in the novel, and here discovers the limits of its utility. Words are of use here only in thinking about the situation (Estrella still needs words to conceptualize the situation, after all); only action is helpful.
Just as Estrella has discovered the limits of where language is helpful and developed to a point where she can be effectual without language, so her next encounter with the barn, the symbol of her linguistic competence, symbolizes her ability to act effectively beyond the limits of where language can be effective, as she demonstrated with the nurse. This is the meaning of her interaction with the barn at the very end of the novel, in which Estrella ascends through the barn to stand on its roof: It is a symbolic statement about Estrella's ability to be supported by (stand on) language while looking beyond it (as she does at the stars, which she compares to diamonds). (175)
For this reason, it is significant that the barn is never actually torn down in the novel: Although its importance may at times be depreciated, as when Estrella offers to help tear it down as a bargaining chip, Estrella still depends to the support provided by language; it is important that the book end without her being deprived of that. Like the other uncertainties at the end of the novel, this one has an important structural purpose.
This transformation of Estrella -- the gaining of competency with language and then her progression beyond that, to a state where language is less important than action -- is what makes it possible for Estrella to meaningfully resist the conditions of her life. The increasing ability to meaningfully resist can be seen in the events tied to the barn throughout the novel: in her arguments with Perfecto and in her scene with the nurse, she is shown as progressively more able to engage with, and then move beyond, the terms in which the discourse about her situation is framed.
Throughout all of this, the barn remains near the family's home, offering Estrella comfort in difficult times and offering the reader a convenient way to gauge her development. As the story is really about Estrella, she is the only one who undergoes any significant character development in the story: the barn is most significant to her, and provides a concrete anchor to which the reader can refer as a gauge throughout the novel.
References
Viramontes, Helena Maria. Under the Feet of Jesus. New York: Plume, 1996.
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