At first glance, Tom Raikes and Larry Russell could hardly be more different. The former is an ambitious lawyer of modest means, determined to secure a place in New York’s high society. The latter was born into a millionaire family. He is educated, generous, sensitive, and seemingly unconcerned with the barriers separating old money from newly acquired fortunes. One represents social ambition disguised as romance. The other offers the promise of a love built on friendship, trust, and respect. But the Season 4 premiere of The Gilded Age raises an uncomfortable question: can two seemingly different men end up occupying exactly the same place in a woman’s life?

For Marian Brook, the answer may be beginning to emerge. After being abandoned by Raikes, she found in Larry everything her first suitor had failed to provide. He was her friend, her confidant, someone who was always there and seemed to see her beyond her social standing. Their friendship turned into love, followed by a marriage proposal and, eventually, a separation. When they finally reunite in Season 4, a storm forces them to spend the night at a hotel. What could have been their definitive reconciliation ends with Marian overwhelmed by anxiety and guilt, desperate to return home before anyone discovers what happened.

The scene is romantic until it suddenly isn’t. And perhaps that transformation is precisely what deserves our attention.

Raikes: The Man Who Promised Freedom

Tom Raikes entered Marian’s life at a moment of extreme vulnerability. Her father had died, leaving her with virtually no money, and the lawyer helped her understand that the financial security she had always believed in had never really existed. The house where she had lived did not belong to her. A young woman who thought she enjoyed a comfortable position discovered that she was dependent on the generosity of relatives she barely knew.

Raikes was aware of her circumstances before declaring his love. And when he did, Marian had hardly considered him a potential suitor. He was the one who insisted, who presented the possibility of a future together, and who encouraged her to defy her aunts’ disapproval. His argument was seductive: why should a woman sacrifice her happiness to obey outdated social conventions?

The problem was that the freedom Raikes offered demanded sacrifices almost exclusively from Marian. He suggested meetings under compromising circumstances, approached her physically in ways that could have caused a scandal, and even admitted that he had hoped to spend the night with her at a hotel. He spoke of marriage and running away together while continuing to pursue the opportunities offered by the very society he supposedly despised.

Marian accepted the risks, defied Agnes, and went so far as to prepare an elopement. Raikes, however, failed to appear for their secret wedding. He had found a more advantageous financial and social opportunity in Cissie Bingham. The woman he had encouraged to challenge every convention was abandoned precisely because he chose to obey the rule that best served his interests: marrying money.

We do not need psychoanalysis to recognize the cruelty of his behavior. But psychoanalysis can help us understand what happens when a promise of love becomes the instrument through which someone is persuaded to surrender her own safeguards.

Larry: The Man Who Seemed Different

Larry Russell initially appears to be Raikes’s opposite. He has no need to acquire a fortune or climb the social ladder through marriage. His relationship with Marian develops gradually, through a friendship that allows them to get to know each other without the immediate pressure of romantic commitment. He respects her intelligence, understands her desire for independence, and seems willing to build a relationship that does not require her to surrender her identity.

Between Raikes and Larry, Marian explores a third possibility with Dashiell Montgomery. He represents the socially appropriate marriage: a respectable, financially secure, seemingly devoted man. But Marian realizes that Dashiell does not entirely see her as an individual. He expects her to give up her work and assume a predetermined place in his life, essentially replacing his late wife. Marian refuses. She does not want to be chosen merely to fulfill a role.

Larry seems to offer a solution to this dilemma. Unlike Raikes, he has no financial interest in the relationship. Unlike Dashiell, he appears interested in the woman Marian actually is, rather than the woman she might become to please him.

Yet there is a contradiction from the very beginning of their romance. Larry also kisses her in secret, participates in discreet meetings, and accepts a relationship that must remain hidden from society while Marian observes the socially acceptable interval following her broken engagement to Dashiell. Discretion is her requirement, but the temptation to cross boundaries is shared.

Until then, the risks seem manageable. A private meeting, a stolen kiss, a conversation away from her aunts’ watchful eyes. Marian allows herself small transgressions while trying to preserve the boundaries she considers essential.

Larry’s lie about his visit to the Haymarket triggers their first major rupture. He does not fully understand Marian’s reaction, as she interprets the incident as a threat to the trust they have built. To Larry, it is a form of masculine entertainment that should not jeopardize their relationship. To Marian, it is the discovery that the man she trusts can also conceal information and dismiss her feelings.

Her experience with Raikes returns, even though Larry is a different man.

The Night Larry Stopped Being Her Safe Haven

Season 4 brings Marian and Larry face to face again. After months apart, they meet, dance, and end up traveling together in a carriage caught in a storm. A problem with the vehicle forces them to seek shelter at a hotel, where Larry arranges two separate rooms.

That detail matters. Larry knows the rules. He understands that an unmarried man and woman should not spend the night together, much less share a room. His decision to book separate accommodations demonstrates his awareness of what is expected of them.

But later that night, Larry knocks on Marian’s door and offers to stay until she falls asleep. She lets him in, they kiss, and eventually make love.

It is a shared decision. Marian desires Larry as much as he desires her, and it would be unfair to deny her agency or responsibility for her own actions. But equality of desire does not mean equality of consequences.

Larry can leave the hotel and continue with his life. Marian, if discovered, could lose her reputation, her marriage prospects, and the social security that depends on her standing as a respectable unmarried woman. There is also the possibility of pregnancy, which would make the situation considerably more serious.

And what makes the situation especially disturbing is that Larry had already proposed to Marian. This is not a man who is unaware of her feelings, nor a relationship in which a shared future has never been contemplated. Yet their engagement had ended, and they do not formally renew it before spending the night together.

The following morning, we find Marian dressed, distressed, and determined to return home alone. We do not see how she woke up or at what moment the previous night’s happiness gave way to despair. We only know that she has grasped the magnitude of what happened.

Larry, meanwhile, seems to interpret her urgency as yet another rejection. Marian has left him before, and he fears she is doing it again. But this time, she has very real reasons to leave. Returning home in Larry’s company could give rise to exactly the suspicions she is trying to avoid.

It is curious that a man raised by Bertha Russell, perhaps the character most acutely aware of New York’s social codes, should have such difficulty understanding the consequences of his actions. We do not know whether Larry is careless, immature, or simply incapable of recognizing that his male privileges do not extend to the woman he loves. But any of these possibilities clashes with the image of a sensitive, attentive partner that he has cultivated.

Desiring a Woman Is Not the Same as Protecting Her

This is where the comparison with Raikes becomes unavoidable. Raikes wanted Marian to defy her aunts, disregard convention, and trust his promises. Larry also asks for trust, also participates in transgressions, and also seems to believe that love should be enough to overcome her concerns.

The two men use different arguments, but ultimately place Marian in a similar dilemma: preserve her own boundaries or respond to the desires of the man she loves. The difference is that Raikes demonstrated, through his choices, that marrying Marian mattered less to him than his ambitions. Larry has shown no such thing. His love may be sincere, and he may still intend to marry her. But that does not erase his responsibility for what happened.

In his 1912 essay on the debasement of love, Freud examined the difficulty some men experience in reconciling sexual desire with respectable romantic attachment. The familiar division between the woman who is desired and the woman considered suitable for marriage does not automatically explain Larry’s behavior, but it offers an interesting perspective on Raikes’s story.

Raikes allowed himself to desire Marian while keeping other marital possibilities open. When he found a more advantageous candidate, he chose respectability and money.

Larry, by contrast, seems to desire precisely the woman he intended to marry. But after their night at the hotel, a question emerges that could fundamentally change our perception of the character: will he be capable of taking responsibility for the consequences of that desire, or will he expect Marian to resolve the conflict they created together?

Loving intentions are no guarantee of care. A man can be sincere in his feelings and still behave in a profoundly selfish way.

When the Ideal Man Ceases to Exist

There is also a psychoanalytic dimension to the image Marian has constructed of Larry. After her experience with Raikes and her unsuccessful attempt at a respectable marriage with Dashiell, Larry seemed to combine qualities she might no longer have believed possible in one man: desire, friendship, respect, and security.

He occupied an idealized position. In psychoanalysis, idealization can lead someone to attribute to a love object qualities that seem capable of repairing earlier experiences of loss and disappointment. This does not mean that Marian loves Larry merely because she wishes to correct the past. But her history makes the possibility of finding someone who will finally not disappoint her particularly significant. The Haymarket lie threatened that image. The night at the hotel may represent an even greater rupture.

Larry has not objectively become Raikes. But in Marian’s emotional experience, he may have come to occupy a familiar position: that of the man who makes her believe in a promise of love while leaving her vulnerable to the consequences of trusting him.

The repetition compulsion, a concept developed by Freud in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, does not require events to be identical. What returns may be an emotional configuration: trust, transgression, fear, and the possibility of abandonment.

Yet it would be misleading to attribute this repetition exclusively to Marian. Larry participates in it, too. He seeks intimacy, underestimates certain boundaries, and interprets the woman he loves pulling away as rejection, without necessarily recognizing his own role in creating the conflict.

The same action on Marian’s part — walking away — may represent an excessive defense in one situation and a perfectly justified response in another. Not every separation is an unconscious escape. Sometimes, leaving is a necessary form of self-protection.

What Does Doing the Right Thing Mean?

According to the moral standards of the 1880s, the answer would seem straightforward: Larry should marry Marian.

But The Gilded Age has developed enough characters to demonstrate that a socially appropriate marriage is not necessarily a happy one. Marian already rejected Dashiell because she refused to surrender her identity. It would hardly be a solution to turn her into a woman who accepts a husband merely to repair a compromising situation.

On the other hand, it would be equally troubling if Larry continued treating what happened as a romantic episode whose consequences Marian alone should overcome.

The real test for Larry will not simply be another marriage proposal. It will be his ability to recognize that loving someone also means understanding the risks that person assumes by returning that love.

And there is something particularly unsettling about the possibility, suggested by the season’s promotional footage, that Marian may have to watch Larry surrounded by other young women while trying to understand where she stands in his life. Flirting is not proof of abandonment, and we still do not know the circumstances of those scenes. But the mere prospect returns Marian to the position she once occupied with Raikes: the woman waiting to discover whether she will be chosen.

Perhaps Larry never intended to hurt her. Perhaps he loves her more than any other man ever has. Even so, his good intentions do not change the fact that Marian, once again, seems to have far more to lose.

Raikes promised a future that he ultimately gave to another woman. Larry has already promised Marian a future, but now he must demonstrate what that promise really means.

They are not the same man. Their motivations, histories, and feelings are different. But the similarity that emerges is disturbing: both desire an independent woman, admire her willingness to challenge convention, and seem to forget that she does not enjoy the same freedom they do.

Ultimately, the question The Gilded Age presents is not whether Larry will turn into Raikes. It is whether a man can consider himself good, sensitive, and deeply in love while continuing to expect the woman he loves to bear the risks he helped create.

Because desiring Marian was never the problem. The question is what these men are willing to do once she returns their desire.