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.

Anna Karenina: Book 1 Chapter 12

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.

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