Giving Up the Power

In my highest level today we were discussing Skipping Christmas, and one of Luther Krank's coworkers, Yank Slader, is jealous of his plan, but he explains that his wife would never go for it. We then began discussing this as a class because one of the students said that he was a weak character, and then another said that he wasn't weak, but that his wife just held the power. Then the discussion turned to amidst a marriage of equals, why would a husband give the power (notice that we were discussing power, not respect which we separated during the discussion). I let the discussion just run its course with them debating amongst themselves when they came to a conclusion of 3 reasons: Emotions, food, and sex. I asked one of the two male students why there was a clarification of a marriage of equals. He stated that if the woman is richer or the woman is smarter then she can obviously have the power without any disagreement. Thought that this 15 minute discussion took a very odd turn from what I had originally planned on discussing, but it was an invited change and a very philosophical way to look at a character in a book that outside of this class probably doesn't get a second thought.