Stri Dharma (strī-dharma)

Stri dharma is the body of duties assigned to women, covering marriage, household, ritual participation and conduct in widowhood. The Mahabharata states the conventional version at length, mostly through Bhishma, and then spends much of its narrative testing it to destruction. Draupadi's question in the assembly, whether a man who has already lost himself can stake his wife, receives no adequate answer from any of the learned men present, and the epic never lets the audience forget it.