cross drssing in the merchant of venice
...eserved for the man in the Venetian social code. Portia uses cross dressing to deceive Shylock by saving the life of Antonio and “[proves] the prettier fellow of the two, / and [wears] her coat a dagger with the ever braver grace” [III, IV, 64-65]. In the Venetian social code, women are not given much power and men “…stand in relation to [women] as repressor[s] to the repressed” [Macdonald 61]. Portia agrees with Shylock therefore binding him to the pound of flesh as his payment, but she finds that “this bond doth give here no jot of blood” [IV, I, 305], and so Shylock cannot take the life of Antonio. Shylock then wants to take three times the bond as was offered to him earlier to him by Bassiano yet Portia stops him because “he hath refused it in the open court” [IV, I, 337]. Portia is taking power over men in this scene because she has the ability to deceive them and so “Portia asserts her status not as some ancillary acquisition to be ignored…but as a fully autonomous self” [Macdonald 68]. Nerissa uses cross dressing to gain power over her husband Gratiano at the end of the play. By telling Gratiano that she will not come to his bed until she sees the ring, she takes control of one of the most important aspects of marital life, sex. She lets Gratiano think of excuses and apologies to what happened to the ring and then she tells him about how she was the clerk and lets him feel dumb. She takes physiological power over her husband and therefore gains power permanently. Jessica, Shylock’s daughter, uses cross dressing to escape her father’s house and convert to Christianity. Jessica hates her house as emphasized when she says “Our house is hell, and thou a merry devil/ didst rob it of some taste of tediousness” [II, IV, 2], meaning that her house is hell and her father is the devi...