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Abstract This is a feminist study of three novels of different cultures and periods: Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights (1847), Leila Aboulela’s The Translator (1999) and Radwa Ashour’s Farag (2008). These novels are tackled within the framework of one of the major themes found in Simone De Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1949): it is the theme of immanence and transcendence. De Beauvoir notes that immanence is usually a state of being assigned to women; it means that they are assigned to inwardness and passiveness. According to De Beauvoir, utter immersion in immanence is one of the major causes for women’s marginalization (37). However, men are ascribed to transcendence which means being outward and productive along with their immanence. She argues that it is only healthy for humans to fluctuate between immanence and transcendence as it is the case with males. In her book, De Beauvoir lists the developmental phases in women’s lives including childhood, puberty and sexual maturation all the way to menopause. She aims to show via all these stages that women are transformed into being feminine rather than being born as one. She declares at the beginning of her book, ”One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” (14). She aims to prove that external social effects are what bring women to their state of immanence and passivity and shape them into objectified beings. The social objectifying processes deprive them of achieving fulfillment and eventually cause them to Al-Sharif 2 immerse into a feeling of dissatisfaction. A woman is denied an independent career and is torn between domestic activities merely confined to her sexual identity, such as childbearing and sexual slavishness. The researcher hence traces the developmental stages of the female characters in the novels and also traces the social processes that transform them into becoming feminine. Thus, the study reflects how some women are marginalized, oppressed, and silenced due to a coercive state of immanence framed by patriarchy; and how others who are able to succeed in achieving their transcendence are actually the ones who could find themselves on an equal footing to men. These transcendent women have revolted against miscellaneous challenges by deconstructing and resisting those established convictions (patriarchy). The choice of this topic is significant for some reasons. This thesis seeks to be objective because it both defends and criticizes literature about women, as some women turn into predators and oppressors. These novels are also chosen in particular because they represent two different cultures: the East and the West. Different ideologies and generations are presented in order to show how patriarchal ideologies prevail almost everywhere. In Wuthering Heights, for instance, the actions of the novel take place in two neighboring houses in the Yorkshire moors in England—Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. Moreover, two generations of the Earnshaws and the Lintons are involved; the Al-Sharif 3 novel is set in the Victorian age. As for The Translator, it is set in two |