The Literary Character of Sita
I shall attempt to answer the question regarding Sita's good qualities.
Here is the link to a small page from "Sita in the City", which was a program for young people. This page has several children's comments regarding the literary character of Sita in the Ramayan:
http://www.avatara.org/sita/quotes.html
Here is an absolutely wonderful summary of Sita's story in the Ramayan, together with excellent painting illustrations:
http://www.exoticindiaart.com/article/sita
You know, in the 1980's, a man in India by the name of Ramanand Sagar (whose name, incidentaly translates as "ocean of Ram's bliss") produced a television series of the Ramayan. Poor little villages struggled to obtain one television, so that many might huddle around and watch these weekly episodes. Ascentic monastic renunciates, who had never watched television, made an effort to view these episodes. The series was scheduled to end after 28 episodes, without showing anything about the sons of Sita, Lav and Kush. The city sanitation workers, who belong to a caste which claims descent from Lav and Kush, threatened to strike unless some Lav-Kush episodes were produced.
I rented and viewed all 28 episodes of Ramanand Sagar's Ramayan, in Hindi, with English subtitles.
I purchased a scholarly study entitled "The Many Ramayans", which investigates the dozens of versions of the Ramayan which have been produced during the 2500 years since Valmiki's original Sanskrit version.
The author relates his favorite anecdote from one version of the Ramayan, where Ram is arguing with Sita, forbidding her to follow him into exile in the forest, and she retorts "How many countless recitations of the Ramayan have you heard, and in which one, tell me, has Sita not accompanied Ram into exile?" Well, what could Ram say? He was totally defeated by Sita's argument. Talk about self-referencing postmodernist literature! Marriage can be a spiritual adventure.
I suppose one might say that Sita is an Indian version of the Madonna, but with eight arms.
I made up a little joke once. "Forewarned is forearmed (and four-armed is Vishnu)". My geometry teacher always used to say, before a test, "Forewarned is forearmed" (meaning, better study.)
If you ever happen to watch the movie "Gandhi", then listen carefully to the music of the sound track at the very end as the credits role by. It is an instrumental rendition of Gandhi's favorite hymn or bhajan, and the words basically speak of "SitaRam". Very few westerners are aware of the significane of that haunting melody.
In literature, we may consider the feminine idea of Beatrice, leading Dante to the highest heaven, or the end of Goethe's Faust, part II, the very last lines, of the eternal femine leading us upward. I shall check my copy of Faust right now.
Aha, here it is, exactly as I remembered from reading it 35 years ago at St. Johns.
Chorus Mysticus.
All earth comprieses
Is symbol alone;
What there ne'er suffices
As fact here is known;
All past the humanly
Wrought here in love;
The Eternal-Womanly
Draws us above.
FINIS
Speaking of final lines in German classics, I was very moved by the last line of Hegel's "Phenomenology of Spirit", where he quotes Shiller, I believe:
The chalice of this realm of spirits
Foams forth to God his own infinitude.
(A little late, I know