Absolutely, I can continue along that line. So if we think about the role of marriage historically, it often ties right into those same social and economic structures. In many ancient and even more recent societies, marriage wasn’t just about love or companionship the way we think of it today. It was very much a contract or a strategic alliance. It was a way of securing property, forging political ties, or making sure that wealth and inheritance stayed within certain families or communities.

In that context, women were often married off for those reasons, and their role was very much about securing alliances and producing heirs. That’s why marriage was such a central institution in so many cultures—it was really a cornerstone of how societies were organized. And unfortunately, that often meant that women had less autonomy because they were part of these bigger family or social strategies.

Of course, over time, those ideas have evolved a lot. Nowadays, we think of marriage more in terms of partnership and mutual love, but those older structures do explain a lot about why marriage was originally so focused on control and why women often had so little say in it historically. So it all kind of ties together as part of that bigger picture.