Ponds, the Feminine Divine, and a Shift in Moral Register

This chapter explores the meaning of ponds in Maithil women's tales. In many stories featuring ponds and occasionally, by extension, other bodies of water, female characters demonstrate special capacities. In Maithil women's folktales, ponds are often sites for the articulation of women's insights, as well as social and metaphysical agency in plots featuring male protagonists. Frequently, the trope of ponds shifts the imaginative register toward women's perspectives and to the importance of women's knowledge and influence in shaping their world. The tales in which such register shifts occur can be called “pond-woman tales” and the insightful women characters found in them “pond women.”