Wing to Wing, Oar to Oar: Readings on Courting and Marrying

by Amy A. Kass (Editor), Leon R. Kass (Editor)

Despite current concerns for “family values” and the dissolution of marriages, Amy A. and Leon R. Kass see very little attention being paid to what makes for marital success. They argue that there are no longer socially prescribed forms of conduct that help guide young men and women in the direction of matrimony; the very concepts of “wooing” and “courting” seem archaic. Yet they see major discontent with the present situation and detect among their students certain longings—for friendship, for wholeness, for a life that is serious and deep, and for associations that are trustworthy and lasting—longings they do not realize could be largely satisfied by marrying well.
 
Wing to Wing, Oar to Oar: Courting and Marrying is an anthology of source readings offered as a response to the contemporary cultural silence surrounding love that leads to marriage. It addresses important questions that emerge not from theory, but from practice: Why marry? Is this love? How can I find and win the right one to marry? What about sex? Why a wedding and the promises of marriage? What can married life be like? Using readings taken mainly from classic texts of Homer, Herodotus, Plato, Aquinas, Erasmus, Shakespeare, Rousseau, Austen, Tolstoy, C.S. Lewis, Miss Manners, and many others, this collection challenges our unexamined opinions, expands our sympathies, elevates our gaze. It offers a higher kind of sex education, one that prepares hearts and minds for romance leading to lasting marriage. and introduces us to possibilities open to human beings in everyday life that may be undreamt of in our current philosophizing.
 
This unapologetically pro-marriage anthology is intended to help young people of marriageable age and their parents think about the meaning, purpose, and virtues of marriage and, especially, about finding the right person with whome to make a life.
 

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Religion, Marriage, Relationships, Poetry

636 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 2000

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent anthology of articles, stories, wedding practices, love, vows, etc., on courting and marrying. Very well done and enjoyable reading. Highly recommended.

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

What a mistake to start reading this tome! This is an anthology - based on a well known college class - about courtship and marriage. There are many selections, from antiquity to the near present-day. Unfortunately this book dates to just before the world woke up to reading books by women and authors of color in addition to those by white male authors. On top of that the intros to each section show a strong bias in favor of a traditional perspective on courtship and marriage. Though framed as questions, and with an occasional remark that the selection might abrade modern sensibilities, a pretty clear perspective emerges. It isn't one that I like very much, frankly - I might have liked the frame to come at the end of each selection, or to have several perspectives represented rather than just the editors'. I hope this isn't used in college now without a good dose of additional texts.

Having said all of that, there are some great reads in here, and some slogs that are still very worthy, and the volume likely isn't meant to be read cover to cover (took me months...) so I only have myself to blame for that. It was thought-provoking to reflect on my own choices in "courtship" (all the stuff that comes from meeting with spark up to a break-up or proposal) and experiences of a relatively long (into 27 year) marriage.

[Todd · Rating 3 out of 5]

Inspires critical thinking and meaningful questions about family, realationship and the bonds of parents and child.
Mother to Daughter, and Daughter to Husband so on and so forth.

Up lifted lost traditions passed down from Mother to Daughter for countless generations... that today are all but Extinct.

A glimpse into a simpler age where respect was given to elders and rules followed. Proper etiquette was embrased for "asking" a mother for permission to court her daughter in the parlor. If she approved of character and "intentions" then a controlled social meeting was arranged.

enerations of wisdom and protective guarding of our young mothers was challendged and after 2 generations, world war II and Rosie's .... Liberated woman who open their own doors.
Scoffing at young boys taught good manners or to respect Mothers....


The book was 400 pages too thick but glad to accidentially find it.

[David Savage · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a fantastic diagnosis of the dysfunction in our male - female courtship today!
This book compiles the best authors in history on the topic into one place and offers tremendous wisdom for those searching for the best that married life can offer.

[Stephanie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Edit: I found what I was looking for from this book in Labor of Love - more complete history, with a balance of hetero and LGBTQIA information, and a delving into the socio/political/economic factors which molded dating from courtship to what we recognize as dating today.
   Not at all what I was hoping for. I was hoping for maybe some history about how courting has been done/what the “rules” were/are, how they’ve changed, how to discern if someone is right for you, some actual guidance in how to determine these things and actually “court.” Instead, there were too many readings of idealized courtships/marriages extracted from literature and given just a short introductory paragraph to frame how readers might approach the text. Notably these excerpts were pulled from classic literature like Shakespearean plays, Pride & Prejudice, the Oydssey, and War and Peace, which if I wanted to read about the courtship and marriage in them, well, I’d read them directly. I had no need nor desire to wade through Shakespearean verse for chunks of plays I haven’t yet read, or 40 pages of highlights from Pride & Prejudice, or re-read a section of the Odyssey just to look at it in this or that particular light.
   I’ve read plenty of stories of many origins about relationships and love, and of a much wider variety than these more traditional views. Because yes, this book was largely assembled in the 90s, and published in 2000, and it shows – while it tries to explore courtship and marriage, it is also rather limiting to a more Christian and traditional view of marriage, between a man and a woman. There are some excerpts on offer which at least acknowledge some more modern views of sex and love, but these are still restrained. Amy and Leon Kass only contributed one excerpt in addition to their introductions to each piece, and the one they offered – about why a woman takes a man’s last name, has done so for hundreds of years, and why women should continue to take the man’s last name upon marriage – shows most strongly that ultimately, this book is more about traditional views of courtship and marriage, and leaves little room or understanding for much more. Their excerpt, as memory serves (I was half falling asleep while reading it, I admit!), did not so much as address the reasons why a man might want to take his wife’s last name instead. In some cultures, like Japan, even though it is largely patriarchal, if a family only has a daughter, it is not uncommon for her husband to take her last name, so that her family line can continue on. Kass and Kass’s piece was heavily biased, more overtly so than the rest of the anthology. I was looking for a more traditional view of things, but even this was too much for me. I tend towards traditional, but with a healthy dose of modern, too, and this anthology lacks a suitable balance between the two.
   I appreciated the literary excerpts pretty much only if they were more philosophically-inclined, like the excerpts from Emile by Rousseau – something that is directly and overtly about the how-to of things, something that spoke to the reader, and weren’t only about having the reader observe how fictional characters behave. Even better than that were the few selections of historical figures writing to someone about these topics, like Benjamin Franklin (now a widower) to a widow whom he was interested in pursuing, or Tocqueville’s observations of American women and family life/marriage. Even the excerpts of writings by such ancient philosophers as Socrates, Erasmus, and Plato on love, eros, and the like were interesting and thought-provoking reads, even if they were not quite what I was looking for either. The selection by Willaim F. May, “Four Mischevious Theories of Sex” (page 189-201) was also more in line with what I was looking for: something concrete and overtly explanatory and thought-provoking.
   Probably the most interesting piece in the whole came early on, about the rules of courtship in the early 20th century (Baily’s excerpt From Front Porch to Back Seat, pages 27-37), and how courtship used to have set and defined roles and expectations. But with the modern era, these rules got put aside in favor of “dating” and going out, and young loves confused by the new rules about who pays for what and that sort of thing. Miss Manners, while dated and often cringe-worthy for the modern woman (and adult in general), was also in line with what I was hoping to see more of in this anthology.
   All in all, I slogged through this tome, losing hope the further along I got that it would offer what I was expecting from it. The last few sections which I hoped would redeem the rest or at least make the slog worth my while did quite the opposite, and only secured in my mind how generally useless this book was for what I was seeking. The last two sections – “Why a Wedding? The Promises of Marriage” and “What Can Married Life Be Like? The Blessings of Married Life” were especially disappointing than the rest, even with my lowered bar. I can see the benefits of using this as a classroom text to encourage discussion, but without that, as a lone reader with just this and my thoughts, it is not up to par for what it could be, and sounds like it was, in the classroom. Hence there are only about 7 quotes below for all 600+ pages of this book and its knowledge.

Quotes:
I have no patience with those who say that sexual excitement is shameful and venereal stimuli have their origin not in nature, but in sin. Nothing is so far from the truth. As if marriage, whose function cannot be fulfilled without these incitements, did not rise above blame. In other living creatures where do these incitements come from? From nature or from sin? From nature, of course. It must be borne in mind that in the appetites of the body there is very little difference between man and other living creatures. Finally, we defile by our imagination what of its own nature is fair and holy. If we were willing to evaluate things not according to the opinion of the crowd, but according to nature itself, how is it less repulsive to eat, chew, digest, evacuate, and sleep after the fashion of dumb animals, than to enjoy lawful and permitted relations? – page 98, excerpted from Erasmus, “A Praise of Marriage”

For this is the way every mortal thing is preserved; not by being absolutely the same forever, as the divine is, but by the fact that that which is departing and growing old leaves behind another young thing that is as it was. – page 227, excerpted from Plato’s Symposium: Socrates’ speech on Eros

And what is true love itself if it is not chimera, lie, and illusion? We love the image we make for ourselves far more than we love the object to which we apply it. If we saw what we love exactly as it is, there would be no more love on earth. When we stop loving, the person we loved remains the same as before, but we no longer see her in the same way. The magic veil drops, and love disappears. – page 275, excerpted from Rousseau’s Emile, “Educating for Love”

The idea of this talking together is that the novios get to know each other really well. The swiftness of the men to enter a sexual relationship of no structural importance contrasts with the care and delay with which they enter into matrimony. But the nature of this talk, though it inevitably varies, has a particular quality associated with courtship and which serves to forward the purpose of that institution. Its purpose is to bind the emotions of each to the other so securely that the attachment will last a lifetime. […] It is generally asserted that the essential attribute for success with women is knowledge of how to talk to them. – page 348, excerpted from Pitt-Rivers’ “The People of the Sierra”

LET us, my Friend, on the contrary, observe a religious Sincerity, appear in our Native Characters, undisguised and unaffected. If under those we gain Esteem and Friendship, our Prospects of maintaining them, are as secure, as our own Minds and Dispositions may be lasting.—Let us be outwardly, what we really are within, and appear in such a Character as we stedfastly design to continue. Hereby we shall lay a strong Foundation for our future Happiness in Marriage. – page 412, excerpted from Benjamin Franklin’s “Reflections on Courtship and Marriage”

In the uncertainty of human life, let us avoid above all the false prudence of sacrificing the present for the future; this is often to sacrifice what is for what will not be. Let us make man happy at all ages lest, after many cares, he die before having been happy. – page 428-429, excerpted from Rousseau’s Emile: The Courtship of Emile and Sophie

American legislators, who have made almost every article in the criminal code less harsh, punish rape by death; and no other crime is judged with the same inexorable severity by public opinion. There is reason for this: as the Americans think nothing more precious than a woman’s honor and nothing deserving more respect than her freedom, they think no punishment could be too severe for those who take both from her against her will.
[…]
To sum up, the Americans do not think that man and woman have the same duty or the right to do the same things, but they show an equal regard for the part played by both and think of them as beings of equal worth, though their fates are different. They do not expect courage of the same sort or for the same purposes from woman as from man, but they never question her courage. They do not think that a man and his wife should always use their intelligence and understanding in the same way, but they do at least consider that the one has as firm an understanding as the other and a mind as clear. – page 575-576, excerpt from Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America: “Marriage and Mores,” as observed in the early 1830s

Not the smallest blessing of married life is the friendship of a thoughtful and understanding soul mate with whom one can share endless hours trying to make sense of it all. – page 546

[Fidel S. · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book is an eye opening example but not the "be-all" book some people might have thought it could be. At first glance, it puts the focus on examing ones feelings and motivations. My real life experiences as a middle aged male is that I've been down the road of "courting and marrying" a couple of times, crashed and burned and tried a second time. Marriage is like a rose garden, beautiful at times, but full of hidden thorns! Those that rated this book poorly seem to be more progressive mindset who wish to reinvent marriage as not a sacred institution. I really don't care who marries who or why they want to call it a marriage. For the 90 percent of us that are seeking a monogamous hetero relationship for life, this book is a good place to start looking inward before looking outward.

[clara · Rating 3 out of 5]

my professor kindly let me borrow this book. i don't think he realized that the whole point of the book is to convince the reader to get married to their love interest. did not work!! nice try kasses!! there is a very strong air throughout of "the kids these days are making different decisions than ours and that's necessarily a bad thing" as if there is one right way to have love in your life or one right type of love to put above every other type. the stuff the editors said i disagreed with a lot, but i enjoyed (and even sort of agreed with!) many of the essays, and i can't say it wasn't a broadly interesting anthology.

[Charles Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terrific anthology.

[Angelina Harris · Rating 5 out of 5]

*4.6

[Eben Gardner]

Cute collection of writings from many authors about courting and marrying. Anti hookup culture book

[Annette Gagliardi]

This was too wordy and too obscure for me to get through. What I read was interesting enough, but the book is massive and it did not hold my attention.

[Louis · Rating 4 out of 5]

A college anthology, about love? Wing to Wing is an anthology about readings from a wide range of cultures and time periods about courtship and marriage. As for any particular philosophy on what relationships look like or individual roles, it does not have anything in particular to say, as the readings come from a wide variety of different thoughts. But there is one thing that they do have agreement, that courtship and marriage (whatever form that it takes) is something not to be taken lightly, that it is something to be valued.

It can be hard reading for those who do not want to think for themselves. The value of something like this is you get the wisdom of ages, from voices that recognize their own foibles, joys, faults, and (as opposed to say, someone in their 20s who has just begun life). There are hopes fulfilled and dashed, couples formed, and broken. Courtship in the open, and in secret. But most of all, stories and wisdom of people learning about one another, and deciding to live life together (or not). Fascinating reading, and wisdom.

[Courtney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Its all about love. Some interesting, some not so interesting.

[Annette]

marriage is a strong, timeless connection that makes life beautiful

[Alissagraham · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nothing exceptionally great or incredibly interesting about this book, but I did enjoy it generally, and I think its a decent compilation of marriage and courtship literature.

[RF · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful compilation of classic works on marriage, courtship, and family. Excellent.