Pativrata (pativratā)

A pativrata is a wife wholly devoted to her husband, and in the Mahabharata such devotion is treated as a source of literal power rather than only of praise. Savitri follows Yama out of the world and argues her husband's life back out of him, Damayanti holds a kingdom together while her husband wanders mad, and Draupadi describes her duties to Satyabhama in a passage that is half instruction and half inventory of labour. The epic also contains sharp dissent, since Sulabha and the women of the Anushasana Parva question how much of this ideal is arrangement rather than nature.