Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas
explored in a literary work.
True Love Conquers All
In the fourteenth-century world of Disney’s very 1950s
fairy tale, pure, innocent love possesses such tangible strength
it can defeat anything, even seemingly unbeatable curses or fearsome
dragons. Unlike the vague and elusive real-world concept of love,
true love within the film’s storybook world has definite qualities
and characteristics, and its rules are easy to grasp. True love
is instant and permanent. Once Briar Rose sees the mysterious stranger,
she falls for him completely and irrevocably. The fairies can’t
faze Rose even when they tell her she’s really a princess and will
soon marry a prince. Instead, Rose flees to her room, distraught
at the possibility that she’ll never be with her true love (whose
name, incidentally, she does not yet know). Second, true love has
utter faith and never questions itself. As soon as Phillip and Aurora
admit to themselves that they love the other, neither ever doubts
his or her decision, and each assumes that their union is the only
right path. For instance, as Phillip hacks his way through Maleficent’s
henchmen and falls off crumbling cliffs, with the future of an entire
kingdom resting on his success, he never questions once why he’s
doing it. Once the couple is united, they will indeed live happily
ever after. The final dissolve of the film transports the dancing
couple from the floor of Stefan’s ballroom into the clouds and serves
as visual proof of the perfection of their relationship and their
faith.
The success of true love matters not only to the lovers
involved, but to other people as well. If Phillip and Aurora do
not unite, the entire kingdom crumbles. Maleficent will reign victorious,
the kingdoms of Stefan and Hubert will not merge, and chaos will
presumably splinter the land, given that a giant dragon is on the
loose. Since true love is rare and special, not everyone can have
it. It becomes a model for others to look up to, and the glue that
holds a kingdom together. Indeed, above all else, the film posits
that true love conquers all. It can defeat and dismiss every obstacle,
every evil, and every unloving person who comes into its path.
Home Is Where the Heart Is
Home environments provide the crucial foundation for the
love and goodness that the characters in Sleeping Beauty value
so highly. The characters who have families have love and support,
even in times of strife. Stefan and his wife have each other and
share a longing for their daughter, the three fairies have one another,
and Hubert has his son and, presumably, a wife back in his kingdom.
The only character with no other human companionship, of course,
is Maleficent. The evil fairy’s inability to love and be loved (she
calls herself the “mistress of all evil”) is suggested by her lack
of proper companionship. She keeps a raven and a horde of subhuman
henchmen within her castle walls, which suggests some sort of perversion.
Even the loving cottage of the fairies and Briar Rose is a humans-only
affair. Maleficent is also excluded from another kind of domestic
relationship: that between parent and child. Stefan and Hubert are
both fathers, and even the fairies raise Briar Rose for sixteen
years. Maleficent has only “my pet,” her raven, which is an inadequate substitute
for, and a perversion of, true human family relations. A moral of
the film is that families provide support and should join to create
even larger families to generate even stronger support. Stefan’s
and Hubert’s joint kingdoms will certainly prosper for generations
to come.
