Considered to be Devi's magnum opus, it tells a story of Satyabati who was given away in marriage at the age of eight to maintain the social norms, and was kept under strict surveillance of brahmanical regulations.

The novel narrates Satyabati's struggle to fight against family control, mental violence of the polygamy system, and social prejudices in patriarchal society.

[4] The protagonist of the story is the handsome Ramkali Chatterjee, who, sometime towards the final decades of the 19th century, combines the functions of priest and physician of the traditional Ayurveda system of medicine in an isolated Bengali village, Five of the women of his extended family — Dinatarini, Kashiswari, Shankari, Shibjaya and Mokshada are widows.

The other, jealous women of the house resent Sarada's success in blackmail her spouse, and manage to persuade Rashbehari to sleep with the second wife.

She then manoeuvers a job for Nabakumar in Calcutta, determined by the move out of the village to secure a good modern education for her sons, while she too begins a secret life as teacher in a girls' school where she encounters Shankari and her illegitimate daughter.

The men of that wealthy household customarily rape their servants, being abetted in this by the other women in their group, and Satyabati manages to save her by taking her away and putting her in a school where she too develops a strong personality.

Now somewhat late in life, Satyabati becomes pregnant and falls seriously ill. Soudamini, a woman who had been abandoned by her husband Mukanda, is brought in to nurse her, though at the same time she speaks hostilely of Suhasini.

Satyabati refuses to attend the son's marriage, abandons the village and plans to go to Ramkali to discuss important questions about what has happened.

[4] Critic Madhuri Chatterjee called it 'a feminist text', as its protagonist Satyabati always has a growing awareness of women's position and she does not always accept society's valuation of them.