In various literary works, different women with different characteristics come into view, which shows that gender issue and the conflict between men and women have been questioned by authors, who aimed at reflecting the gender problem by highlighting the position of females in society. Women are sometimes portrayed as obedient, sometimes as rebellious characters in literary works. Therefore, the social conditions and the cultural norms play a very important role in the depiction of female characters in literature. In this sense, in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, Flaubert’s Madame Bovary and Uşaklıgil’s Aşkı Memnu (Forbidden Love), the focus is on the conflicts not only between women and men but also between women and social norms restricting the lives of females, metaphorically confining them and preventing them from proving their identities. In addition, in these realistic works, the female protagonists are involved in adultery, which causes them to experience psychological problems together with the social ones. As a consequence, in this study, the characteristics of these female protagonists will be discussed in the 19th century Russia, France and Ottoman Turkey, in a comparative manner, so as to identify the impact of the social pressure upon these female characters, who commit suicide at the end of these novels and to recognize the destructive nature of the patriarchal norms upon females in different environments.