This article seeks to understand the relations between urban spaces in nineteenth century Rio de Janeiro and the gender relations expressed in José de Alencar's narrative in his urban feminine novels: Diva, Lucíola and Senhora. Changes in the capital of the Empire in the nineteenth century provoked new expectations about the normatization of circulation expressed in these novels. José de Alencar was a novelist, playwright, chronicler, parliamentarian and statesman of the Brazilian Empire. In all these activities the political dimension, understood as the space for the articulation of the social and its representation, was strongly present.
José de Alencar; urban novels; Rio de Janeiro