Abstract
The article discusses gender representations of petitions sent to the State Affairs Secretariats of the Kingdom and the Empire. The documentation was found in the Biographical Documents Collection of Rio de Janeiro National Library’s Manuscripts Division, having been set apart for analysis only the petitions containing references to confinement of female establishments founded in that city. In petitions addressed to the monarch through the secretariats, applicants used traditional representations of femininity and maleness, reinforcing or reversing them, as a discursive strategy, adopted in order to obtain certain Royal favors. Gender images analyzed not only referred to couples domestic relations, but also alluded to broader Power conceptions, involving the subjects and the sovereign.
Keywords:
Gender representations; female clustering; divorce