How Society Has Treated Women

The Mahabharat is unusually direct about this, and it does not flatter the society it describes. Draupadi is staked and dragged into an assembly that will not answer her question. Amba is refused a marriage and cannot get redress from anyone. Kunti carries a secret she is given no safe way to tell. Gandhari blindfolds herself for a lifetime.

What is notable is that the epic gives these women the arguments. Draupadi's question in the hall — whether a man who has already lost himself can stake another person — is never satisfactorily answered by the men present, and the text lets that failure stand as a failure.