I was struck, in this section of reading, by the very complex and troubling stories of women in the Ramayana. Of course, we saw this in Narayan too, but now there is just even more to add to the list.
On the one hand, there is the story of Rambha. This story actually seems to be protective of women, and obviously the moral of the story is that rape is bad. Reading this story, though, I was reminded of the story of Ahalya. For one, both women were at one point turned to stone, an interesting parallel, though Ahalya was turned to stone after her 'transgression' and Rambha was turned to stone and later raped by Ravana. But, more importantly, I saw that both these women were raped - Ahalya through elaborate trickery - yet one, Ahalya, was blamed and punished for the event, while Rambha's husband comes to her defense and curses Ravana for what he has done. I found this parallel, and the different treatment of these women, troubling. Not so much in the case of Rambha, I guess, but it only reminded me of how wrongly Ahalya was treated.
More shockingly, this section of reading contained two examples of women killing themselves when their husbands had died. First there's Savari; self-immolation was mentioned and suggested in Narayan's version, often by Sita, but here it actually happened. Just the thought of it, of dying that way and willingly stepping into a fire, is quite gruesome. And the way it's handled as something noble and, even worse, normal for a woman to do when her husband has died is just terrible. It's like the women have no purpose for living without a husband. And Savari seemed like a pretty important character - obviously, she was able to fulfill a purpose in helping Rama, even on her own. It seems like there's a mixed message there. Then, there was also Vali's wife, who stabs herself after his death. Pretty dark.
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