Audiences of the Mahābhārata have long considered the epic's female characters as among the text's most fascinating and lively personalities. In Strī: Women in the Mahābhārata, Kevin McGrath conducts an extensive study of the epic's heroines. In addition to an entire chapter on Draupadī, McGrath discusses many of the epic's other main female characters in considerable detail, including Kuntī, Gāndhārī, Damayantī, Sāvitrī, Ambā, and Śakuntalā.

Sensitive to the phonic and poetic dimensions of the Mahābhārata, one of McGrath's stated interests is the way in which female characters speak and the consequences of their words. As he suggests, “Men and women are … very different in how they speak and the effects of their language” (p. 25). McGrath's book sets out to examine the speech of female characters “through a close reading of speeches in [the] Mahābhārata—not only the explicit and substantial content of speech, but also the metaphors and metonyms that women deploy both socially and privately; it analyzes the underlying systems of reference to which these tropes refer” (p. 21). This is a worthy goal, and throughout his discussions of each female character, McGrath brings attention to a number of interesting details that surely contribute to our understanding of each literary persona and, at times, to a more general understanding of the ways in which female characters are depicted in the epic. Nonetheless, McGrath's book falls short of executing its stated goals.

To begin with, McGrath's definition of femininity is unsatisfactory: “those qualities which cohere about women in the poem, which are particular to them and which distinguish them as women” (p. 1). Despite offering detailed analyses of the speeches of female characters, McGrath's attempts to articulate a general notion of femininity in the epic remain undeveloped, rarely venturing into how the actions or words of the main characters link up with more abstract notions of womanhood or femininity, or feminized concepts such as prakṛti, vāc, or śrī. Consequently, at times, his attempts to define the actions of the main female characters in terms of their “femininity” come across as tautological. When he claims, for example, that the “femininity of Draupadī is unique” (p. 76), it is difficult to discern what he means exactly. With such vague and circular notions, it is hard to accept McGrath's later conclusion—when discussing the Ambā story—that femininity is somehow a fixed essence in the Mahābhārata: “Femininity is a quality which cannot be modified or in any way altered, and thus would seem to approximate to an absolute” (p. 113). Surely, the multidimensional depiction of many of the female characters, as well as the text's many gender-bending personae, should at least qualify this statement.

One of the more potentially interesting discussions is McGrath's exploration of the efficacy of female speech acts. He suggests, for example, that the speech of women, such as Sāvitrī, “is capable of effective action” (p. 15). While the potency of the words of female speakers is a crucial topic, it is not as straightforward as McGrath presents it, as the curses and vows of female characters often are muted, subverted, or subordinated to fate, divine intervention, or the speech of men. McGrath treats Gāndhārī's curse on Kṛṣṇa, for instance, as an example of the effectiveness of a female speech act. However, even though Gāndhārī's pronouncement does indeed come to pass, it can only come true because Kṛṣṇa lets it come true. While Gāndhārī's words are still somehow connected to Kṛṣṇa's demise, the power of her speech is subordinated to Kṛṣṇa's divine status. Thus, when McGrath later claims that “the power of women lies in their ability with speech” (p. 114), he neglects to explore how this works. What gives it this authority? Are there some circumstances under which their words are more effective and authoritative than others?

Another quality that McGrath argues is typical of female characters is that they suffer: “Women in the epic are generally figures of extraordinary mental suffering” (p. 103); “women in the Mahābhārata suffer intensely on the grounds of feeling and affection” (p. 110), and so on. Besides the risk of reducing these otherwise complex and multidimensional characters to powerless victims, McGrath's discussion is unhelpful in terms of illustrating what is in any way distinctive about female characters in relation to male characters. Indeed, suffering is one of the central themes of the entire epic, with two of the most prominent male characters, Dhṛtarāṣṭra and Yudhiṣṭhira, exhibiting some of the most extreme expressions of pain, loss, and regret.

In general, McGrath's book would have been greatly enhanced by a more thorough engagement with the work of other scholars who have written about women and gender in the epics and in other ancient Indian sources.