If you were the guy that the fathers didn't want their daughters to marry then you were SOL. You can still experience this in churchianity courtship culture. For as much as they will talk about wanting to see marriages, these courtship-model families will stiff-arm you if you don't meet up to their standards (usually money). What the girl you're going for thinks be damned. So every system has it's pros and cons.
Personally, I like being able to approach any girl and talk to her directly. I like doing that over "asking her dad for permission to date/marry her." Never go for a dragon-guarded woman.
I think you are thinking that the grass is greener on the other side. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. But I do know you're stuck with the hand you're dealt with. So the only thing to do is to play it the best you can since you can't ask for a different one.
Ultimately though, it's in the interest of fathers to marry off daughters quickly, otherwise they'll have to support them for even longer. And if a father creates a spinster daughter, then he'll be supporting her until he dies.
So father-based marriages happen fast and usually to stable men. Keep in mind a father cannot make a daughter marry someone against her will, but he can create a 'pool' of men for the daughter to choose from. This prevents female paralysis-analysis which comes from having too many choices. It actually works very well which is why it was the norm since Abraham.
Actually, in the old days, the biggest problem wasn't father approval. In fact that was a non-issue. The issue was mother approval, specifically for her son. Up until a hundred years ago, usually the mother would try to prevent their sons from marrying, because the son was seen as the retirement plan for the mother. The mother would heavily filter out women who would not be loyal to her.
This is why historically there was so much animosity between the mother-in-law and the wife-to-be. The MIL did not want a wife who would take too much of her son's time, so she would have more support from her sons.
If the mother thought some girl would be too demanding of her sons, she would do everything in her power to kill that relationship. Usually with good success. Historically the prospective wife would have to walk on eggshells around a mother to avoid her wrath until marriage. Afterwards there would be war or family feuds. This problem continues to this day, the animosity between mothers and daughter-in-laws are very frequent.
There is currently a subreddit with nearly 100k members dedicated strictly on the topic of MIL's from hell:
Wives and MILs were 100x worse back when parents had more power over their children. That subreddit would have 10 million members if it was made in the 1800s, for example.