Draupadi: Revisioning the Mythical Character in Chitra Banerjee

Divakaruni’s the Palace of Illusions

Soma Guha Das

and Shiony Das

St. Aloysius’ College(Autonomous), India

Madhyanchal Professional University, India

Keywords: Mythical Character, Re-Visioning, Retelling, Unconventional, Enigmatic Psyche.

Abstract: In mythology, Draupadi is a very significant woman who speaks her mind with an unbending will in the male-

dominated world. Her unconventional marriages and her active role in the fatal battle recognized her as

different from others. Women's writing is a medium of expression and an outlet for one's emotions and desires.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s The Palace of Illusions is a judicious retelling, reinterpreting of the

Mahabharata myth from a feminist perspective. She analyses the fact that since ancient times women have

been cornered and marginalized in society. The events of Mahabharata are narrated by Panchali, whose voice

acquires universal significance. It has surely achieved momentum in the present scenario. This paper is going

to explore the elaborate implanted in the characterization of Draupadi, the mythical character through the

words of the female mind of the author, in this novel. It further discusses the effrontery of Draupadi as the

expression of her intricate relationships with Karna, Krishna and her Palace are the incomprehensibility of

her enigmatic psyche.

1 INTRODUCTION

The binary concept of patriarchy and female

submissiveness is one of the most prominent themes

in Indian Epics. Rewriting and revisioning a mythical

character through the lens of modernity and

sensibility is a bold step into a new literary world. It

portrays a new and refreshed look to the character

which is unconventional to the audience and readers.

In mythology, Draupadi is a very significant woman

who speaks her mind with an unbending will in the

male-dominated world. Her unconventional

marriages and her active role in the fatal battle

recognized her as different from others. Women's

writing is a medium of expression and an outlet for

one's emotions and desires. Chitra Banerjee

Divakaruni’s The Palace of Illusions is a judicious

retelling, reinterpreting of the Mahabharata myth

from a feminist perspective. Divakaruni created many

women characters in mythology, she said, “I was left

unsatisfied by the portrayals of women characters in

…they remain shadowy figures, their thoughts and

motives mysterious (Divakaruni xiv-xv)1.

Divakaruni portrays Draupadi’s life as a series of

choices created by herself and not by the people

around her, giving her a voice in a male-dominated

society that prevailed in Ancient India. She analyses

the fact that since ancient times women have been

cornered and marginalized in society. The events of

Mahabharata are narrated by Panchali, whose voice

acquires universal significance. It has surely achieved

momentum in the present scenario. Far from being

docile and frail, we now see women as iconoclasts.

Draupadi’s life is not only troubled by her conjugal

concerns but also by the system of patriarchy. She

gathers the courage to face the challenges of

patriarchal notions which are an aspersion to her

womanhood and wins remarkable success when she

deconstructs patriarchy. This paper is going to

explore the elaborate implanted in the

characterization of Draupadi, the mythical character

through the words of the female mind of the author,

in this novel. It further discusses the effrontery of

Draupadi as the expression of her intricate

relationships with Karna, Krishna and her Palace are

the incomprehensibility of her enigmatic psyche.

2 DETAILED REVIEW

The Palace of Illusion is about women’s

discrimination, struggles, identity, male domination,

992

Guha Das, S. and Das, S.

Draupadi: Revisioning the Mythical Character in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s the Palace of Illusions.

DOI: 10.5220/0012534100003792

Paper published under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

In Proceedings of the 1st Pamir Transboundary Conference for Sustainable Societies (PAMIR 2023), pages 992-995

ISBN: 978-989-758-687-3

female perspectives, and status of women during the

period of The Mahabharata. The humiliation that she

experienced was taken as the challenge of life.

Draupadi’s life indicated and taught in Vyas’s epic

how women need to accept the concept of tradition

and culture without any questions.

The views of Draupadi do not match with these

ordinary women and the result was as powerful as she

was. Many renderings of her life story especially

some particular episodes in it are created, recreated,

interpreted and constituted in the larger narrative

universe” (57). Divakaruni explains Draupadi’s

determination and courage throughout the novel.

Whether it was ancient or the modern period the life

of women has not had any changes, it has had only

challenges to face and perform according to the

context. It displays how a woman born as a princess

suffered in her life. Draupadi seeks to break the

shackles of the stereotypical concept of how women

can be women. Within the peripheries of patriarchal

society, Draupadi is exceptional and singular, as

Spivak called her odd, unpaired, and uncoupled.

In this novel, Draupadi brings out her strong

trajectory since childhood as her first impact was on

education which was not provided to her whereas her

brother was given this priority. Her tutor told her

brother to inform her that “ A Kshatriya woman’s

highest purpose in life is to support the warrior in her

life”(Divakaruni 26). Her father and teacher

neglected her education. When she questioned her

brother “Who decided that woman’s highest purpose

was to support men?” (Devakaruni 26). The brother

replied that is what I’d like you to do. The author

wanted to show that the old practice of every woman

of those periods whether she was a queen or a normal

woman, nobody cared about the education of women

and they were bound to do what men wanted them to

do. Their duty was to take care of their husbands and

to pray that they with glory on the battlefield.

Marriage is a custom that is taken as their decision to

abide by the social regime and family acceptance.

Swayamwara means the practice of searching for

their own groom. Draupadi was subjected to

Swayamwara, but she was pledged for Arjuna by her

family and Krishna. To value her father’s words, she

was forced to surrender herself to whatever her father

pointed out. Devakaruni gives this message to society

that in this male-dominated society, a daughter is a

puppet of her own family, a less prioritized creature

to the men, the rulers of their house. Women were

treated as slaves by men to obey their orders without

any question. In The Palace of Illusions, Draupadi

was burning with inner anguish. Draupadi failed to

express her views when Kunti asked her to marry all

five sons. She was waiting for Arjun to stand up for

her against marrying all the five as they were

promised to each other but nobody objected to the

words of Kunti. As a result, she became a victim of a

social evil polyandry.

In this novel, Draupadi not only exists as a passive

being but also rises up to become a symbol of the

contemporary woman figure. She raises her voice in

Duryodhana’s court where she was gambled away by

her husband. Ashamed Draupadi questioned the

elders in the court that once a person was sold as a

slave, they had no right to wager others, but she was

mistaken to discover that the laws of men would not

save her. The scene portrayed by the author proves

that the law which was equal to all would not be the

same for women. This attracts the attention of readers

and the audience that the representation seems to

perpetuate a stereotype. Significantly Draupadi as a

character has served as a creative impetus for many

writers and painters. Everyone has expressed either

an emotional point of view or an ideological position.

Subramanya Bharathi, the Tamil poet wrote in

Panchali Sabadam the disrobing of Draupadi as the

tribulation of Mother India, whose body has been

“invaded” and “Stripped” of dignity. Bharathi made

the nation awake to retaliate using Draupadi as a

source of inspiration. He adds that she believed in her

inner strength and strong convictions. Unlike these

narratives, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni ‘s The Palace

of Illusions, a reading of the epic story through the

gendered eyes of Draupadi offers a new perspective.

Draupadi wants to draw her own destiny though

within the confines of epic narrative. This action of

creativity responding to a former version of a story is

deemed Re-visioning. Draupadi remains as a strong

persona and shows that she never feels lower herself

to them by begging for her dignity and respect. She

re-invents herself as a powerful woman who is not

dependent on her husband in her hour of need. She

never received any answer to any of her questions in

court. Her anger and revenge for this unfortunate,

shameful act against her were the reason for the war

which was finished with the death of Kauravas.

The author’s Draupadi deconstructs the former

narratives in order to establish her ‘self’, a self that is

complex and multi-layered. Her version of self

becomes a source of empowerment which finally

leads to her emancipation. The process of

empowerment starts with the validation of the

material itself. Here, Draupadi initially challenges the

male dictum and celebrates her feminity. Her life was

filled with dual struggle, an attempt to harmonize

different, controversial roles into one stable identity

on the one hand, and her constant fight to seek

Draupadi: Revisioning the Mythical Character in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s the Palace of Illusions

993

attention from others. She struggled to balance her

different roles according to the circumstances, which

made her audacious but her complex and

contradictory attitude made her unique. She attracts a

special presence to the men in her life. She impressed

and was influenced by these men, especially the

unattainable lover of her dreams Karna, her enigmatic

friend Krishna, and her heroic husbands. Her intimate

bonding with her twin brother Dhri saves her from the

deep despondency of a neglected childhood. His

patience with her audacity, self-control, and calmness

at her indignation and his support for her quest for

learning strengthen their relationship.

In Vyas’s Narration of the epic, the Krishna-

Draupadi bond is sunk in divinity and devotion. But

Divakaruni’s Draupadi saw Krishna not as a savior

but, as a friend and one who really fathoms the

intricacy of her complex mind. His appearance

reduced her abhorrence for the lonely life in her

father’s palace. Even she wonders if they share a

similarity as they are both dark-skinned. Draupadi felt

how much Krishna was to her during yagna, “When I

thought you had died, I wanted to die too”(166) In her

final journey she again realized that all men in her life

valued their virtue more than hers. There was only

one love that existed in the world -her love for

Krishna. He made her confused and gave her

salvation.

Draupadi’s marital life teaches her that a female

does not have a choice of freedom from a polygamous

wedding. It was a curse for her. Arjun won a difficult

test, so she chose him as her husband, and that’s why

Arjun married her. But later she was insulted by

Arjun who remained silent when Kunti asked his

brothers to share her. Yudhishtira further degraded

her by carrying out their mother’s wish by treating her

as if she was an object won in a context. Her marriage

needed extreme self-control, patience, and a great

deal of adjustment. She had to tolerate the wifely

responsibilities of five great heroes with equanimous

temper. “Dreaded or desired or even demanded by the

male, virginity is the highest form of the feminine

mystery” (Beauvoir 206). The virginity boon

bestowed on Draupadi conserves her nobility both in

the epic and in the novel. But she realized that her

polyandry was an injustice to her self-esteem.In

return, she wished to have a gift of forgetting as she

felt the virginity boon benefitted her husbands than

her. “ If the sage had cared to inquire, I’d have

requested the gift of forgetting (120). The protagonist

broke the stereotypes of womanhood through her

admiration for Karna, the arch-enemy of her

husbands. She appreciated Karna, the quintessential

tragic hero who had suffered rejection all through his

life. Her secret love for Karna was no longer

illegitimate. The undefined attraction to Karna was

caused in her mind long back when she met him. But

she was forced to insult Karna and reject her

Swayamwara only to save her brother’s life. He

gradually became an unfulfilled desire in her as a

mode of retaliation against her polygamous wedding.

Her revulsion of being a ‘communal cup’(120) in the

hands of men triggered her yearning to be the wife of

a single man. Karna was more of her dream as well as

an imagination. She saw him as an outlet to placate

her stormy mind. “As insidious voice inside me said,

Karna would never have let you suffer like this” (99).

Draupadi’s unintentional hurts and mistaken response

to her humiliation bring him closer to her. Karna

loves her though he gets angry at her insults. “I told

myself I hated her […] but I was only fooling myself”

(276).

Rational reading of Draupadi and her relationship

with men consults her revolutionary psychological

interpretations. Divakaruni’s Draupadi’s search for

her own self was the fundamental search for

womanhood, born and brought up in a hegemonic

patriarchy. Bandhopadhya observes, “In a story of

power, politics, and carnage the true portrayal of

characters shorn of their divinity and virtuous status

gives them a façade of ordinariness. Hence viewing

Draupadi as an ordinary woman with extraordinary

willpower elevates her to unparallel personifying

womanhood. Simultaneously she became a site for

affirming and challenging the ideologies of patriarchy

as she was a victim of it and a person who wished to

free herself from it. “ […] I was surprised at how

angry it made me feel and how helpless”(120).

In The Palace of Illusions, the episode of

Draupadi’s disrobing is a fine instance of

objectification of womanhood and her quick response

to it. When she was compelled to expose her body to

the men around her, she became a mere object.

Actually, she was hurt because of the indifference of

her husband and the lusty eyes of the men around her.

“Let them stare at my nakedness. Why should I care?

They and I should be ashamed for shattering the

bounds of decency”(193). She questions the legality

of the transaction when she was pledged like a chattel

in the game of dice. Nobody replied to her question if

Yudhishthira actually still had the right to lose her

after he had already lost himself. So she decided to

give up her traditional feminity to restore her

challenged dignity, “I will not comb it until then I

bathe it in Kaurava blood” (194). Thus, she became

both a victim of patriarchy and a threat to patriarchy.

She is at once a “palimpsest and a contradiction”

(Spivak 388). Draupadi’s high temperament was

PAMIR 2023 - The First Pamir Transboundary Conference for Sustainable Societies- | PAMIR

994

triggered by her urge for self-esteem. The patriarchal

conservative beliefs shackle her attempts at self-

realization. But she was uninterested in being

inculcated with the stereotypes of feminity. Hence

Draupadi’s revitalized feminism is observed. Her

experiences of refusal and rejection also accelerate

her audacity. Family and home are the places where

the identities of womanhood are constructed,

deconstructed, and reconstructed regularly. Since

childhood, Draupadi has dreams of possessing her

own palace. She was seeking a space to hold her

identity with rootedness and control over her life. Her

search for ‘the’ palace is indeed her search for herself.

“[ …] my palace would be like no other”(113). For

Draupadi, constructing her identity happens through

the exploration of the possibilities of her palace. It

was not only an architectural construction but an

embodiment of her empowerment. There she

achieved the much-deserved space and glory. She

believed that her identity was not constituted to fulfill

the expectations of others. She appeared visibly

liberated when she became the mistress of her palace.

This showed her sense of emancipation. It helped her

to forgive the treacherous behavior of Arjuna(his

other marriages). This encouraged and strengthened

her to win over her mother-in-law. “[…] and the

palace of illusion was my domain, and she accepted

this” (150).

Taking over her palace by Duryodhana was like a

cause of shattering of her ‘self’. The palace also is a

stimulant in connecting the imaginative inner space

and domestic outer space of Draupadi. Her struggle to

build a magical palace and her capacity to

comprehend the potency of the female self -lead her

to a self-sufficient and self-engaged individual.

Therefore, her palace became a transformational

space – a place of performance and a site of

resistance.

A Revisionist literary text seeks to reconstruct the

traditional characters which have been marginalized

in the original text. It encourages the readers an

irreplaceable experience of reading the revisionist

literary text as the vision and concept are altered.

3 CONCLUSION

Divakaruni’s best-seller novel of the year in India The

Palace of Illusions is a re-telling of the Indian epic,

The Mahabharata from Draupadi’s perspective. It is

about the clear path sought by the inspiring feminist

voice and self-centered voice of Draupadi from

Vyasa’s The Mahabharata. Divakarini’s Draupadi

did not wait for any males to protect her from misery.

They help themselves by recognizing and solving

problems. They re-write the fate of womanhood by

resetting themselves against traditional agreements.

This revisionist literary text brings out contemporary

issues like identity crisis, marginalization, and gender

discrimination of women in the male-dominated

society. It is expressed through a mythological

character, Draupadi who did not have any voice,

choice, or identity in the original text but

Divakaruni’s Draupadi had the courage and strength

to question existing restrictive laws and to show the

world that every woman has an identity of her own.

By giving a voice and space to the suppressed, it

opened new imaginations and possibilities in the

literary world. In a review Tariqa Tandon Said,

“Divakaruni’s interpretation provides a humanistic

touch to the epic, making it more realistic, more

relatable and more personal” which gives a new

insight into the epic.

REFERENCES

Chitra Baneerjee Divakaruni.(2008) The Palace of

Illusions. Picador.

Bandyopadhyay, (2016). Indrajit Rape of Draupadi. Lulu

Press.Inc.

Beauvoir, Simone De. (2011)The Second Sex.Vintage.

Devi, Mahaswetha, (1977) .Brest Stories.Translated by

Gayatri Chakravorthy Spivak Seagull Press.

Chakravorthy Gayatri Spivak (1981) .Draupadi by

Mahaswetha Devi Critical Inquiry vol 8(2) .P-381-402

Syam, Amreeta ,(1991) Kurukshetra,Writers Workshop

Tandon Tariqa .(2023) . The Palace of Illusions: A Book

Review,Alternatives International Journals, 2 Feb.

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