Lebanese Civil War narratives by women writers received considerable attention in studies by Western scholars such as Miriam Cooke and Evelyne Accad. However, through my focus on three novels in this dissertation, Hanan al-Shaykh’s The Story of Zahra (1980), Najwa Barakat’s Ya Salaam (1999) and Alawiyya Subuh’s Maryam of Stories (2002), that are concerned with the pre- and post-war environments, I hope to contribute a more holistic understanding of Lebanese society as presented by women writers. I concentrate on the development of patriarchal structures of oppression as well as creative means of resistance by its victims through the study of representations of gender, sexuality and violence. Ya Salaam and Maryam of Stories, it should be noted, have not been studied, and scholarship on The Story of Zahra has focused on its second part, neglecting the first part that treats Zahra’s psychosexual development and provides important insight into prewar Beirut. I approach the explicit discussion of sex and violence in these novels as evidence of their focus on the body, a contested site. I also discuss their interest in the relationships between women, a link explored through the centralization of female characters in the texts. My dissertation further explores traditional patriarchal structures and patterns of gendered oppression that demonstrate remarkable temporal and spatial mobility. I complicate my study by revealing the diversity among these three novels, evidenced by their varied treatment of gender, sexuality and violence. The Story of Zahra is concerned primarily with characters’ negotiation of gender, and it uses these processes to explore themes of sexuality and violence. In contrast, Ya Salaam utilizes violence as a lens, and Maryam of Stories approaches gender and violence through sexuality. Rather than employing a unifying theoretical framework in this dissertation, I link the novels thematically, utilizing psychoanalysis, and Feminist, literary and gender theory throughout, including the work of Freud, Jung, Cixous, Connell, Flax, Foucault and others.