Draupadi Reimagined: Using Feminist Stylistics and Écriture Féminine in Song of Draupadi

Abstract

This article critically analyses The Song of Draupadi by Ira Mukhoty through the dual lenses of Feminist Stylistics as proposed by Sara Mills and Écriture Féminine as theorised by Hélène Cixous. Recasting Draupadi not as a passive mythological figure but as a complex, embodied subject, Mukhoty disrupts the traditional patriarchal narrative of the Mahabharata. The article investigates how Mukhoty’s stylistic and linguistic choices foreground Draupadi’s agency, resistance, and subjectivity within a socio-cultural and political context. Feminist stylistic tools are employed to analyse the novel’s lexical, syntactic, and discourse structures, focusing on narrative voice, power dynamics, and gendered language. The article examines how Mukhoty’s prose exemplifies Cixous’ Écriture Féminine, characterised by fluidity, multiplicity, and embodiment, in order to reinscribe feminine experience into literary discourse. The textual analysis reveals how the novel reclaims Draupadi’s silenced voice by employing subversive narrative strategies that reflect female corporeality, emotional truth, and historical reclamation.

This study concludes that 'The Song of Draupadi' is not merely a retelling, but a radical literary intervention that challenges canonical interpretations and repositions the female voice at the centre of myth. The article thus contributes to feminist literary scholarship by demonstrating how language and form serve as tools of ideological resistance and reclamation in postcolonial feminist narratives.