الفهرس 
Theoretical BackgroundOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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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
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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
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novel is set in the Victorian age. As for The Translator, it is set in two