What Is Laura's Abuse?

Laura is in an abusive marriage with her husband Martin, and she decides that the only way out is by faking her own death. Laura moves to Cedar Falls, Iowa, and takes on the name Sara Waters. However, back home Martin discovers that Laura faked her own death. He is able to track her down when he finds that her mother, who he believed dead, was still alive and living in a nursing home in Iowa. Posing as a cop Martin is able to locate Laura to Cedar Falls. From there he follows her home, and he begins to leave little clues making his presence in the home known. A struggle soon follows and Martin tries to kill Laura with a gun, but Laura gets the upper hand, and is able to get the gun away from him. Laura calls the police and tell them that she …show more content…
After fleeing to Cedar Falls, Laura was unable to trust anyone throughout most of the movie, and even after she had gotten to know Ben better, she was still unable to be physically intimate with him. On the other hand, Ben and her life with him was an experience that left a very positive mark on her life, and allowed Laura to fully move on from her past. Ben was the first person that Laura had met when she first arrived in Cedar Falls, and even though their first meeting did not go very well, he was able to slowly gain her trust and she was truly able to open up to him. Without the impact that Ben had on Laura’s life she may never have been able to truly feel safe again. He was also one of the main reasons that she had been able to see her mother again. In fear of being caught alive, Laura was unable to visit her mother in the nursing home, but thanks to Ben’s help and his connections to the drama department, Laura was able to disguise herself as a man and see her mom for the first time since her “death”. This gave her the sense of completion; she know had everything she had wanted when she ran away. She finally had her mother back in her life, and she had a new, safe relationship with …show more content…
Laura had been living in an abusive relationship for many years, and the psychological damage she received was great, and she was unable to have a very normal social life due to the abuse. She constantly lived in fear of her husband Martin, and the idea of “messing up” in his eyes terrified her, and she lived in a state of constant stress. Laura had to have everything in the house perfect at all times, or she would have to face Martin’s wrath. Then in order to escape, she faked her own death and ran away to small town Iowa; there she found herself all alone, and unable to fully trust anyone. Even the smallest of sounds would send her into a panic; in fact, just seeing the hand towels in a straight line made her think of Martin, and she had to quickly check the whole house to make sure that he was not there. This movie is a great example of how living in an abusive relationship, and effect a person not only psychologically, but can have a damaging effect on their social skills and social life; and it had a wonderful psychological