“Kunti, or Pritha, is the daughter of Shoora of the Vrishnis, given away when just a child to her father’s childless friend Kuntibhoja. This rankles deep within her; she voices her resentment pointedly both before and after the Kurukshetra war. Growing up in Kuntibhoja’s apartments, she finds no mother; Kuntibhoja himself hands her over, in adolescence, to the vagaries of the eccentric, w:Irascibleirascible and fiery sage Durvasa. Should she displease the sage, she is warned, it will dishonour her guardian’s clan as well as her own.”

— Kunti

Five Holy Virgins, Five Sacred MythsOf Kunti and Satyawati Sexually Assertive Women of the Mahabharata

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Kunti 52

character from Indian epic Mahabharata

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“The large-eyed daughter of Kuntibhoja, Pritha by name, was endued with beauty and every accomplishment. Of rigid vows, she was devoted to virtue and possessed of every good quality. Her father Kuntibhoja invited, O best of monarchs, the princes and kings of other countries and desired his daughter to select her husband from among her guests. The intelligent Kunti, entering the amphitheatre, beheld Pandu--the foremost of the Bharatas… The amiable daughter of Kuntibhoja… advancing with modesty,…placed the nuptial garland about Pandu's neck.”

Kunti character from Indian epic Mahabharata

Mahabharata translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli in: Mahabharata/Book 1: Adi Parva/Section CXII https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Mahabharata/Book_1:_Adi_Parva/Section_CXIIThe, Wikisource

“Large-eyed and well endowed, as her name Pritha connotes, she is strikingly lovely, and Kuntibhoja exhorts her not to neglect any service out of pride in her beauty. Kunti’s relationship with Durvasa does not appear to have been easy. In the account she gives much later to Vyasa, she tells him that despite Durvasa’s conduct having been such as to provide abundant cause for anger, she had not given way to it. She further states that she was constrained at the sage’s insistence to accept his boon, whereby any god would be compelled to answer her summons, and that she obeyed out of fear of his curse. The interaction that she describes after this between her and the sun god, Surya, is exactly similar – the same insistence and the same fear.”

Kunti character from Indian epic Mahabharata

Five Holy Virgins, Five Sacred MythsOf Kunti and Satyawati Sexually Assertive Women of the Mahabharata

“Pandu was married to Kunti, the adopted daughter of King Kuntibhoja. Her real father was King Sura of the Yadava clan. Kuntibhoja had adopted her and used her to serve a Brahmin visiting his court. This Brahmin [Durvasa] was known both for his irascibility and his great magical powers. Kunti served him so well that he blessed the king and gave Kunti several mantras with which she could call any god to father her child. In her childish curiosity, Kunti used one mantra and called Surya, the sun-god. He appeared immediately and begot a son on her. Frightened, Kunti put the child in a box, with gold and jewelery, and set it in the river. The boy was found and adopted by the suta Adhiratha, and became known as Karna.”

Kunti character from Indian epic Mahabharata

Source: The End Of An Epoch, p. 12.

“Kunti, like Ahalya with Indra, is curious. She wishes to test whether Durvasa’s boon really works. Significantly, this desire arises in her after she has menstruated. In her account to Vyasa, she frankly states that she had desired (sprihayanti) Surya, again reminding us of Ahalya when approached by Indra. Perceiving a radiant being in the rising sun she invites him, using the mantra. Once summoned, Surya, like Indra, will not return unsatisfied. He cajoles and browbeats the girl, assuring her of unimpaired virginity, and threatening to consume the kingdom and the boon-bestowing sage if denied. A thrilling conflation of desire and fear overpower Kunti’s reluctance, and she stipulates that the son thus born must be like his father.”

Kunti character from Indian epic Mahabharata

Five Holy Virgins, Five Sacred MythsOf Kunti and Satyawati Sexually Assertive Women of the Mahabharata

“Her mother called to her. She said, "Where are you going, Flora Belle?"
Flora didn't answer her. She never answered her mother when she called her Flora Belle.
Sometimes she didn't answer her mother when she called her Flora either.”

Kate DiCamillo book Flora & Ulysses

Source: Flora & Ulysses (2013), Chapter Four: A Surprisingly Helpful Cynic, p. 12

“O slayer of foes, I have no complaint even if thou beest unpropitious to me. I have, O sinless one, also no complaint that though by birth I am superior to Kunti yet I am inferior to her in station. I do not grieve, O thou of Kuru's race, that Gandhari hath obtained a hundred sons. This, however, is my great grief that while Kunti and I are equal, I should be childless, while it should so chance that thou shouldst have offspring by Kunti alone. If the daughter of Kuntibhoja should so provide that I should have offspring, she would then be really doing me a great favour and benefiting thee likewise. She being my rival, I feel a delicacy in soliciting any favour of her. If thou beest, O king, propitiously disposed to me, then ask her to grant my desire.”

Kunti character from Indian epic Mahabharata

Madra addresses Pandu after the birth of Kunti's sons and also of the hundred sons of Dhritarashtra
The Mahabharata/Book 1: Adi Parva/Section CXXIV

“To me she was a woman but to herself she was still a child calling to her mother to hold her hand and help her. And her own mother, in the secret life we do not see, was a child too. I come from a line of children without end.”

J.M. Coetzee book Life & Times of Michael K

Life & Times of Michael K (1983)
Context: He closed his eyes and tried to recover in his imagination the mudbrick walls and reed roof of her stories, the garden of prickly pear, the chickens scampering for the feed scattered by the little barefoot girl. And behind that child, in the doorway, her face obscured by shadow, he searched for a second woman, the woman from whom his mother had come into the world. When my mother was dying in the hospital, he thought, when she knew her end was coming, it was not me she looked to but someone who stood behind me: her mother or the ghost of her mother. To me she was a woman but to herself she was still a child calling to her mother to hold her hand and help her. And her own mother, in the secret life we do not see, was a child too. I come from a line of children without end.

“I recall some years ago this mother and son in California who was very angry and stomped out of the meeting and I did not see her again because I said it was the duty of Christian parents to have their child in the Christian school. And she went on about how wonderful their church was, and how marvelous the youth was, and her daughter had the best kind of Christian training imaginable and she was a good witness at school. And I never saw her again but I heard from her about six, seven years later when she called me weeping. Did I know a school that would take her daughter because her daughter was now into demonism, she was out sometimes for two or three nights, was into drugs and promiscuity, if the mother tried to say anything to her the girl thought nothing about pulling a knife and backing the mother against the wall with a knife against her throat and threatening her life. And she wanted to know if there was a Christian school in town, in particular, and I told her it would take a full time guard to stand over your daughter every moment, and she wanted, she felt that it was unchristian that they wouldn’t take her daughter. And I reminded her of her stand a few years back, when she continued to whine and feel sorry for herself, someone was going to take the mess she had created and hand her back her daughter, perhaps to stick her back in the public schools again.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Audio lectures, Dangers Inherent in Public Education (March 24, 1986)

“She let out a laugh, and then she put her hand over her mouth, like she was angry at herself for forgetting her sadness.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

“Ophelia is a little walking owl, bewitched by her unconscious feminine, her father, and what "they say." She never finds her own voice. She never finds her own body or her own feelings and therefore misses life and love in the here and now. Gradually the waters of the unconscious to which she is "native and indued" swallow her.”

Marion Woodman (1928–2018) Canadian writer

Source: The Owl Was a Baker's Daughter (1980), p. 9

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