Would you take objection if your spouse wanted to keep photos of his/her late spouse on the parlour walls?

A young lady here in my village recently married a widower. He is 41, she is 24. They have been married 3 months now. He was married to his late wife 15 years before she passed. Everything has gone well in their relationship/marriage up until this point.

2 weeks ago, her mother decided to impose upon the newly married couple. The mother-in-law convinced the lady that if the man truly loves her, he would be able to move on and focus all of his attention on her. The wife asked her husband to take down the photos but he refused.

In response, the mother-in-law demanded the lady move back in with her and her husband until the man takes down the photos. The husband has filed a grievance demanding that if the wife doesn't return in 3 days, the family should return the bride price, which would dissolve the marriage.

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DrWatson · 70-79, M

I know a couple who met at a widow/widower support group and got married.
They have a picture of each of their first spouses side by side on a shelf.

In this case, the situation is not symmetric like that. And what you say at the end indicates that this marriage is within a culture that is different from my own. In particular, the role of a mother-in-law in a marriage might not be what I am used to. But it sounds to me as if the wife had no objections until her mother showed up.

But to answer your question about how I would react: If I were single and dating a widow, I would get a sense of how she remembered her first husband and how she thought of me. My decision would not be about a photo, it would be about her attitudes. If I was comfortable with all that, and we fell in love and got married, I would be fine with a photo displayed somewhere in the house.