This paper is concerned with the conceptualization of the female body in samples from Arab and American literatures, by virtue of the analysis of Hanane El Sheikh’s The Occasional Virgin(2015), and Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar(1963) respectively. The present investigation relies on feminist criticism traced by Simone De Beauvoirand Julia Kristeva, in addition to Michel Foucault’s theory of docility. As such, this paper examines the cultural boundaries, which surround the portrayal of the female body; and explores accordingly, the remote similarities and differences in the delineation of the female corporeal identity in the two novels. It furthermore, exhibits the dichotomy of female-male corporeality in socio-biological and historical contexts. Moreover, the paper signals out the various socially gendered layers that lurk behind the biological sex, wherein the overwhelming majority of cases, the existence of the female body marks the utmost presence of absence.

Female Body; Feminism; Society; Docility; Abject