This Marrying by Margaret Culkin Banning

Perhaps the modern substitute for the coquetry of the old-fashioned woman before marriage is the introduction of "problems" into her love-making. The man still courts -- a little more discreetly than he used to but much after the same plan -- but whereas the woman of a generation ago was supposed to lead him a whimsical chase, now giving, now withdrawing her favor, refusing to admit her feelings, the typical woman of today is apt to admit her feelings readily enough, but she preludes her submission to them by the introduction of a host of "problems."

Sometimes it is the problem of whether she wants to have children or not -- sometimes the question of giving up a separate, wage-earning existence, sometimes a theory against the inequality of marital concessions, sometimes this, sometimes that. But questions of this sort have become such common experience that one wonders sometimes if the whole thing is not a development of the old feminine practice of playing with a man from behind a feather-fringed fan. Not that these women of today consciously concoct their problems to trouble their lovers or excite further ardor in them -- far be it from the thoughts of most of them to so illegitimately fan a man's flame, and perhaps the whole suggestion is unworthy and unfair. Still, so many girls have these preliminary problems before they marry -- so many courtships are painful, harassed affairs these days -- so many moonlit nights are spent in putting questions which do not read, "Will you love me always? " but "Will I be able to maintain my individuality? " or in the bewildering phrase of poor Lady Harmon, "my autonomy," that this dwelling upon mating problems among women surely looks like a modern group movement. And no reflection either on the honesty or fervor of contemporary women. The same doubts stirring in their minds have always stirred in the minds of courted women -- doubts as to whether such happiness, such devoted love as comes in the first fragrant period of love-making can endure and what will happen if it does not endure? Formerly women teased their lovers for assurances of perpetual love. The woman now, more wise, more honest, more skeptical too, about perpetual love, puts a different face on her questions. She asks -- "And if this love does not turn out well, what then? Shall I be wrecked? Can I maintain enough of my independence, of my beauty and strength, to play the game through? Will this man be grasping and demanding? Is love an exhilaration worthy of the submission of my body and spirit?"