Abstract
The Mahābhārata can be easily read as a thoroughly male story about two sets of cousins who engaged in a terrible battle for the throne. Even the narration is predominantly male, as the most of the stories are primarily narrated by males to other males.
This reading can lead us to believe that female characters are nothing but hapless and voiceless victims of the powerful patriarchal structures of the storyworld, and that their only role in the story is to suffer in silence or lament for their slain relatives. In this paper, I argue that female characters of the "main story" of the Mahābhārata are far from such passive victims, and that their characters are as multi-layered, colourful and even powerful as their male counterparts.
First of all, there is the common wife of the Pāndavas, Draupadī, who is among the chief causes of the battle and who could even be seen as the truly central character of the Mahābhārata. There are also women who actively take part in a battle (Gangā, the former woman Śikhandin).
For most of the issues concerning the war, there are both male and female characters who incite the war (Kuntī, Draupadī, Bhīma, Sahadeva), who try to prevent it (Gāndhārī, Bhīsma), who lament for their slain relatives (Gāndhārī, Yudhisthira). Considering the framing issues, women are present as secondary listeners of many of the stories, and sometimes even as their narrators (Kuntī, Gangā), influencing the way stories are narrated and even perceived by other characters and audiences, which makes female voices a vital part of the Mahābhārata's design.
In this paper, I will show how women as characters and narrators negotiate their voice in the storyworld by comparing how selected male and female characters are shown performing the same narrative functions.