Ancient Utterances of Feminism in Indian Epic: A Study of Draupadi's Character in Mahabharata

Feminism has been a major critical approach in analyzing the female representation in literary texts. In the Western societies it developed around 1840’s through subsequent stages. In the context of Indian literary tradition, an early wake of feminism can be traced to the ancient Indian Epic of Mahabharata. The character of Draupadi has been of great interest as she shows a multifaceted treatment of women. She is the epitome of subjugation, objectification and the enlightenment of women in society. This paper aims to study the character of Draupadi from the epic and look into the various feministic dimension that she personify using the Feminist criticism as a methodology. A modern critical study of the ancient epic will be presented in this paper.