When Agnes—with sincere religious feeling and quotations from the Bible—tries to convince Mrs. Bloomfield that how Tom treats helpless animals will have ramifications for his moral character, Mrs. Bloomfield uses a shallow, self-serving interpretation of Christian scripture to claim that God created animals merely for people’s “convenience.” Thus, Mrs. Bloomfield thwarts Agnes’s attempts to teach Tom better morals, insists on a destructive power hierarchy in the household, and uses insincere religion as a tool to justify her son’s cruel behavior.