This book consists of the study of five Brazilian novels produced in the last decades of the nineteenth century: O mulato (1881), O cortigo (1890), both by Aluisio Azevedo, A came (1888), by Julio Ribeiro, Bom-Crioulo (1895), by Adolfo Caminha, and Dona Guidinha do Pogo (1897) by Manoel de Oliveira Paiva. These novels, traditionally considered naturalist, portray tensions caused by the realignment, or, better still, the sudden visibility of people such as strong women, blacks, mulattoes, and homosexuals in Brazilian fiction.