The following quote by Tolstoy reminded me very much of the difficulties faced by modern families trying to institute courtship. We have thrown out the old without finding a suitable replacement. We have yet to find a way to deal with marriage without vulnerability on someone’s part. Perhaps our model should be tweaked to teach our children the blessings of vulnerability.
I am not even sure anymore what “courtship” is since each family defines it differently.
Princess Shcherbatskaia had herself been married thirty years ago,
her aunt arranging the match. The wooer, about whom everything was
well known beforehand, had come, looked at his intended, and been
looked at. The matchmaking aunt had ascertained and communicated their
mutual impression. That impression had been favorable. Afterward, on a
day fixed beforehand, the expected proposal was made to her parents,
and accepted. All had passed very simply and easily. So it seemed,
at least, to the Princess. But over her own daughters she had felt how
far from simple and easy is the business, apparently so commonplace,
of marrying off one’s daughters. The panics that had been lived
through, the thoughts that had been brooded over, the money that had
been wasted, and the disputes with her husband over marrying the two
elder girls, Darya and Natalya! Now, since the youngest began to
come out in the world, the Princess was going through the same
terrors, the same doubts, and still more violent quarrels with her
husband, than she had over the elder girls. The old Prince, like all
fathers indeed, was exceedingly scrupulous on the score of the honor
and reputation of his daughters; he was unreasonably jealous over
his daughters, especially over Kitty, who was his favorite, and at
every turn he had scenes with the Princess for compromising her
daughter. The Princess had grown accustomed to this already with her
other daughters, but now she felt that there was more ground for the
Prince’s scrupulousness. She saw that of late years much was changed
in the manners of society, that a mother’s duties had become still
more difficult. She saw that girls of Kitty’s age formed some sort
of clubs, went to some sort of lectures, mixed freely in men’s
society, drove about the streets alone; many of them did not curtsy;
and, what was the most important thing, all of them were firmly
convinced that to choose their husband was their own affair, and not
their parents’. “Marriages aren’t made nowadays as they used to be,”
was thought and said by all these young girls, and even by their
elders. But just how marriages were made nowadays, the Princess
could not learn from anyone. The French fashion- of the parents
arranging their children’s future- was not accepted; it was condemned.
The English fashion of the complete independence of girls was also not
accepted, and not possible in Russian society. The Russian fashion
of matchmaking was considered unseemly; it was ridiculed by
everyone- even by the Princess herself. But how girls were to be
married, and how parents were to marry them, no one knew. Everyone
with whom the Princess had chanced to discuss the matter said the same
thing: “Mercy on us, it’s high time in our day to cast off all that
old-fashioned business. It’s the young people have to marry, and not
their parents; and so we ought to leave the young people to arrange it
as they choose.” It was very easy for anyone to say who had no
daughters, but the Princess realized that, in the process of getting
to know each other, her daughter might fall in love, and fall in
love with someone who did not care to marry her, or who was quite
unfit to be her husband. And, however much it was instilled into the
Princess that in our times young people ought to arrange their lives
for themselves, she was unable to believe it, just as she would have
been unable to believe that, at any time whatever, loaded pistols were
the most suitable playthings for children five years old. And so the
Princess was more uneasy over Kitty than she had been over the elder
daughters.
I have to admit they sure know how to cook, no wonder Paula Deen comes from Savannah!