True Love In The Film Sleeping With The Enemy

A beautiful woman named Laura Burney spends her days catering to every need or want that her husband could possibly desire. Restricted to stay at home and physically abused for deciding otherwise, Laura sets out to fulfill the only option she has left. She decides to fake her own death in order to escape the presence of her husband and one day live a rather normal and finally happy life, a strength that most woman in that situation would not have chosen. Laura moves to another state and develops a love for her new neighbor, who shows her what true love actually feels like. In this 90’s film, Sleeping with the Enemy, Laura showcases the rarity of a woman defending her rights and letting go of her past without the help of anyone but herself.

Though what is true love in the sense of a fairy tale? The Disney version depicts a servant girl who meets a prince, they dance at a ball, and BOOM live happily ever after in their lives together, or so we believe. Most feminists would view this as a disgrace in the idea that someone can make all problems go away without any effort put forth. It devalues the morals that should be set for children, leading “women who once swore they’d never be dependent on a man, smile indulgently at daughters who warble ‘so this is love’” (Orenstein 2) because who has the heart to tell them in our society love rarely works like that. Danielle emphasizes otherwise. She shows that though she plays the part of Cinderella, she is more suitable in exemplifying that women are more than just objects. The first time she meets the prince she is actually seen pelting him with apples to prevent her horse from being taken, instead of worshiping him at his feet and begging him for his attention. Their relationship, unlike Cinderella, is not instantaneous, but rather they take the time to learn about one another. In Disney’s version most adults would view Cinderella as being an “insipid beauty waiting… for Prince Charming” (Yolen 330), although it is not Danielle who is seeking love but rather prince Henry. He has been forced into a potential arranged marriage by his father and spent a majority of his life fighting off girls who are only obsessing over him due to his positon in power. He desires something real and begins to see that in Danielle. In this case, it is not Danielle who is seeking a “good looking man with dough, who will put an end to the onerous tedium of making a living” (Kolbenschlag 317), but rather Marguerite and even the Baroness. This is best expressed when the Baroness begins selling Auguste’s items, such as his candle sticks, to buy jewels for Marguerite to impress the prince and win his proposal.