Because of its visibility and liminality, the doorway, like the window, was an ideal location for advertising prostitution. Since the threshold gave prostitutes access to the exterior while remaining within semi-domestic space, but able to entice the viewer and invite entry, literary prostitutes frequently stand in the doorway of a house or tavern to ply their trade. For example, in the female picaresque novel La pícara Justina (1605), Justina's father establishes an inn and instructs his family on business matters. Among other dictums, he orders his daughters ‘tampoco se os olvide que nunca falte una de vosotras a la puerta, bien compuesta y arreada, que una moza a la puerta de meson sirve de tablilla y altabaque, en especial si es de noche y junto a la cancela’ [neither should you forget that one of you should always be at the door, attractive and adorned, since a young woman in the doorway of an inn serves as an advertisement and coffer, especially if it is night and she is by the entry]. Justina's father's advice highlights the doorway's erotic connotations as a lure to passing males and stresses the importance of clandestine sexual commerce to inns of the period, despite repeated legislative attempts to prevent it. Likewise, in Don Quijote, the semidoncellas [half-maidens] of Juan Palomeque's inn display themselves in the doorway to entice travellers. Cervantes’ narration recounts that ‘estaban acaso a la puerta dos mujeres mozas, destas que llaman del partido […] que en la venta aquella noche acertaron a hacer jornada’ [there were by chance in the doorway two young girls, of those called in the game … who had determined to earn their daily wage in the inn that night]. Brothel prostitutes sometimes displayed themselves in the doorways, enticing potential customers in a similar manner to the window displays of prostitutes of Amsterdam's modern red-light district, and the positioning of women within the brothel could indicate distinctions in erotic capital among them.