History of cross-dressing the Pelennor Fields outside the city Minas Tirith. In Tamora Pierce's Song of the Lioness series, the main character, Alanna, disguises herself as a boy for eight years in order to become a knight. William Shakespeare made substantial use of cross-dressing for female characters who took on masculine clothing to carry out actions difficult for women. In "The Merchant of Venice", Portia and her maid dress as men to plead in court on the merchant's behalf, and are quite successful in their ruse; in the same play, Shylock's daughter Jessica dresses as a man to elope with her Christian lover.
Jessica (The Merchant of Venice) actions amount to abandoning her father and betraying him to his enemies. By the last half of the 20th century this "sentimentally sympathetic reading" was starting to be rejected, but without a corresponding reassessment of Jessica. She was still viewed as inhabiting primarily negative values, in contrast with the positive values associated with Portia, Bassanio, and Antonio. Writing in 1977, Raymond B. Waddington thinks that: Slights contradicts this view, pointing out that it conflicts with "a natural audience response" and argues that "we must question judgments that deny the most obvious emotional force of Shakespearean plots and characters." Shakespeare's plays