The issue of gay marriage has, of course, prompted vociferous debate about what this most fundamental of institutions is, and what it isn’t. But to a greater or lesser degree, marriage in some aspects has been quietly, even unconsciously, renegotiated by many of us in the West. A modern marriage, with its notion of equality of the sexes, and of being all things to each other, is a different beast from the marriages of our grandparents or great-grandparents. Did their clear gender hierarchy (antipathetic as it may be to 21st-century minds), plus the reciprocal practical requirements of men and, above all, women, make our forebears more clear-sighted about married life? Are we asking too much of it? Do we need to rethink?