Angry Words Softly Spoken deals with the concept of feminism as a cross-cultural literary device that uncovers the social development of women’s emancipatory progress through the work of both English and Arab female novelists. The main premise of this study relies on many of the theories presented by the 1970’s feminist critical movement, especially that of Elaine Showalter’s tripartite structure. It also suggests a new tripartite structure for the evolution of feminist consciousness in works of fiction involving an inversion of scales in ‘softness’ and ‘anger’ explored through the work of such authors as Charlotte Brontë, Sarah Grand, Virginia Woolf, Layla al Othman, Nawal al Saadawi and Hanan al Shaykh.