Draupadi: An Epitome of Feminine Assertion in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s The Palace of Illusions

Abstract

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is an Indo-American writer. She has won many accolades and awards. Among her novels The Palace of Illusions captures the magical world of epic for its twenty century readers. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni writes that she is unsatisfied by the portrayal of women in the Mahabharata. The present paper makes a study of Draupadi’s perspective in the Mahabharata and her struggle to come from the suppression. Indians are fond of talking and celebrating their magnificent history. The Palace of Illusions is a story of friendship, freedom, betrayal, war, rage and revenge. Breaking free from the trends, retellings are the genre where a character like Draupadi has been presented as a heroic sovereign in the epic of Mahabharata. The character of Draupadi in the book The Palace of Illusions has been narrated as one who was firm and a woman with rigid determination. It is to interpret the identity and individualism of a woman in the society.