Directed by Sanjay Leela Bansali, Devdas released in 2002 and is based on Sarat Chandra Chatterjee’s romance novel of the same name.
Why you ask? Well for one, based on the time period the story is set in, we know one thing for sure, no woman in the Devdas universe was free from the weight of patriarchy.
Parvati Chakraborty AKA Paro was heavily weighed down by class, caste and sexism. She was pressured into breaking it off with Devdas and marrying a much older man who denied her of love and a sex life in order to preserve her family honour.
If we’ve learnt anything about patriarchy, it’s this; women are pitted against each, we’re taught to compete for male validation and basically, dislike each other.
They both loved the same person, yet didn’t see each other as competitors. And, even though Paro first met Chandramukhi with hostility, she soon came to realise that Chandramukhi was as human as she was (despite what she must’ve grown up learning about sex-workers).
Not only was their friendship an act of magnificent rebellion against patriarchy, both Parvati and Chandramukhi were equally strong people in their own right.
Or for that matter, how Paro put him back in his place when he tried to feel her up like an absolute creep? Because, no sir, you cannot go around violating women like that!
Parvati Chakraborty even checked her husband and mother-in-law real quick towards the end of the film. She questioned how her husband, Bhuvan Choudhry, could shame her for falling in love with someone before they got married, when he himself told her he could never love anyone other than his first wife (AFTER they got married, mind you).
These two defied patriarchy together. Especially by seeing each other for who they truly were. Just two women learning to survive in a system that was actively working against them.