On Courtship

Today I participated in a seminar led by Professor Amy Kass on courtship, based around an Erasmus dialogue. We talked about the clever woman's ability to bring men to think about marriage and children rather than just love. I am somewhat uncomfortable to think of gender relationships in terms of women changing men or men changing women, but, on the other hand, perhaps as long as this influence toward change is a) a change in being and not just saying, and b) is a change for the good, then this change is legitimate. Also, my preferred model for courtship is the Anne/Gilbert or Emma/Knightley model--the model of friendship. But according to Dr. Kass, this ignores the complementary aspect of courtship and emphasizes too much the equality and sameness of the parties involved. I just wonder if something isn't lost when we think about relationships in terms of power.