This paper aims to investigate the problem of violence represented in some twentieth century novels by women, based on the recognition that violence is a gendered phenomenon within the context of patriarchal social relations. Feminist theorizing of violence has engaged with the existing analysis of family and the state, and has insisted that violence against women is not a question of individuals doing harm to individuals, but of patriarchal social structure. Thus, feminists have argued that the way violence is used and acted out in relationships, encounters and institutions is specifically gendered and constructed by, as well as a reflection of, the power relations which constitute hetero-patriarchy. This paper examines women writers` diverse and complex responses toward the concept of power and violence. First, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Virginia Woolf, who belong to the first wave of feminism, take a firm stance in non-violence, regarding violence and war as the outcome of male-centered fascism. Their pacifism emphasizes motherhood as a way of overcoming male violence. Secondly, Monique Wittig and Maxine Hong Kingston, who belong to the second wave of feminism, recognize patriarchal power relations as the conditions in which women have been excluded, devalued, and silenced by a language whose subject is always masculine. They thus stage a cultural war against phallocentric language and symbols. They are different from the first-wave feminist writers in that they do not avoid counter-violence, which is for them a holy war against the male-oriented symbolic order. Thirdly, unlike Wittig and Kingston who argue for women`s counter-violence in cultural fields, Toni Morrison and Helen Zahavi, who produced their major novels in the 1980s and 1990s, perceive sexual violence as the outcome of male dominion over women`s bodies. They clearly demonstrate that sexual violence, combined with class and racial factors, embodies the patriarchal concept of women as `others` and `subalterns.` Based on this perception, it is no accident that the heroines of their novels consciously commit a brutal murder as a way of revenging the society which overlooks female victimization These new portrayals of physically excoriating counter-violence by women suggest how far Western women have moved away from their non-violent, pacifist days. Despite their differences, however, twentieth century women novelists represent women`s longing for exercising their power in ways that intervene, disrupt and obstruct the workings of the patriarchal order. They show that women must understand those dimensions of their power which are capable of confronting gender dominance, and transforming it in ways women are recognized as equal subjects as men