Sītā–Rāvaṇa

The relationship between Sītā and Rāvaṇa is a confrontation between coercive power and steadfast refusal. In the encounter, Sītā is forlorn among the fiends while Rāvaṇa presses his suit; she rejects both his desire and the claim that force can make her his.

Captivity and Coercion

The scene presents Sītā as isolated and vulnerable, while Rāvaṇa approaches as a king seeking to possess her. He urges her to accept his love and dismiss her fear, then asserts that force gives his kind the right to seize. His appeal therefore shifts from courtship to an explicit assertion of power: Sītā is not free to treat his proposal as an ordinary offer.

Sītā’s Refusal

Sītā turns her back on Rāvaṇa and answers his suit with a demand that he turn from sin and follow virtue. She calls on him to show honor to other men’s wives, refusing to accept his desire as a justification for violating her marriage. Her response makes the moral distinction between wanting someone and having a right to take them central to their encounter.

Sītā states her attachment to Ráma as mutual and unbroken: “Linked like the Day-God and his shine, / I am my lord's and he is mine.” Her loyalty is not presented as uncertainty or negotiation; it is the reason Rāvaṇa’s advances cannot succeed.

A Rejected Alternative

Her answer also offers Rāvaṇa a way to stop compounding his offense: repent, return Sītā to Ráma, and seek the hero’s friendship. The proposal places a possible peaceful course beside Rāvaṇa’s coercion, but the passage records Sītā’s appeal rather than its acceptance. The relationship is thus defined not by reciprocal affection but by the contrast between Rāvaṇa’s attempted possession and Sītā’s insistence on virtue, fidelity, and her own bond with Ráma.