I would like to think that a close call like the encounter with the bailiff would have set me straight, and that I would thereby completely reconsider my values, yet I know all too well how fierce the force of habit can be. Tom is so fixated on his vision of becoming an idle and libertine "gentleman" that he can only conceive of the accumulation of wealth as a solution to his problems.
The grasping man is all too familiar with the ways that love can be twisted around for the sake of selfish gain, such that marriage becomes nothing more than to tool for social advancement. Here Tom is being wed to a rich old woman, either an old maid or a widow, and while she seems to gaze at the priest quite happily, the groom is already leering past her in longing for her young servant.
The dilapidated church surely says something about the state of a society where such mercenary unions are blessed. Observe how the tablets with the ten commandments are cracked, and the poor box is covered in cobwebs, next to a pew reserved for those who can afford to pay for the privilege.
In the background Sarah, along with Tom's child, have come to stop the marriage, and her mother is having it out with the churchwarden. The two dogs are a perverse mockery of the whole event, symbolizing how ridiculous the game has become.
For my own generation, marriage had already become far less relevant, but of those I know who did marry, some did so out of lust, and a good many more did it for the sake of status. I am acutely aware of how easily love is confused with the desire for pleasure or profit.
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