Recreating Draupadi and Sita in Mythological Fiction

The lure of mythology-related works has always attracted writers and critics to reinterpret and revisit myths. Writers create new, imaginative versions of mythological episodes and characters from our epics in various languages. Feminism-inspired retellings have given voice to neglected female characters of ancient mythological works by authors such as Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Amish Tripathi, Devdutt Pattanaik, and Kavita Kane. Their works have done justice to the voiceless characters by placing them as the protagonists. Despite being the heroines of epics like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, the character of Sita and Draupadi never got their due in the original works. Still, new-age authors are subverting and recreating them to gain a deeper understanding of their perspectives. The paper aims to explore the myth of Sita and Draupadi in a new avatar in the light of Feminism.