Kalidasa's Abhigyan Shakuntalam occupies a distinguished place in classical Sanskrit literature because it combines lyrical beauty with a searching inquiry into love, memory, duty, justice, and human responsibility. This article examines Shakuntala as a multidimensional portrait of womanhood rather than merely an idealized romantic heroine. It argues that her compassion, self-respect, emotional resilience, spiritual maturity, and intimate relationship with nature make her the moral centre of the drama. Her movement from the innocence of Kanva's hermitage through love, public rejection, motherhood, and eventual recognition reveals womanhood as a process of ethical growth rather than a fixed social role. The study also interprets Dushyanta's recovery of memory as an ethical transformation: abhigyan signifies not only recollection through the signet ring but recognition of Shakuntala's truth and of the king's own responsibility. Through close textual analysis informed by Sanskrit aesthetics, Indian feminist criticism, ecofeminism, and ethical criticism, the article explores the symbolism of the ring, forest, court, dharma, and Bharata. It concludes that the play remains relevant to contemporary debates on women's dignity, relational equality, responsible leadership, environmental care, and moral accountability. Kalidasa's heroine is therefore neither a passive victim nor a modern individualist projected backward into antiquity; she is a culturally rooted yet universally intelligible figure whose integrity transforms private suffering into ethical authority.