Babette's Feast

Diana.

The film Babette’s Feast was watched in class. This late 80’s film took place in the 19^th century on the western coast of Denmark. Again, this film focused on a repressed, protestant society. The people in the town were extremely modest in the clothes they wore and especially in the food they ate.

It seemed as though breakfast, lunch and dinner were always the same; dried fish, ale soup, coffee. There was hardly any variation and spice.

Babette, a French citizen fleeing her country, was told to come to this small village for a safe haven. The older sisters were also the daughters of the founder of the small village’s religious sect. Moved by Babette’s story, the sisters take her in and she begins to work for them as an unpaid maid. For fourteen years, Babette worked for the sisters; always dependable and compliant.

Babette received a winning lottery ticket for 10,000 francs. She asked the sisters if she could provide a French meal for them and some elderly members of the community. As they watched Babette collect the materials for the dinner party, the sisters became worried and frightened. One of the sisters had a nightmare that portrayed Babette as a witch or a devil, as she prepares the animal heads in the flames of hell.

The imagery in this dream is what Norman O’Brown writes about in chapter 14, The Protestant Era in the book called Life Against Death. The protestant mind is filled with regular thoughts and ideas about the devil and all of the “devilish things” that one can be part of. People did not dance, did not take pride in things, and was not lazy because they are all things of the devil. It is the opposite of the indulgent life of Catholics. The characters in this film did not dance, wore dark clothes, and did not pursue the things that made them unique. One of the sisters gave up her voice lessons even though she was extremely talented. She gave them up because she felt guilty that she was enjoying and indulging into herself.

Assuming that she was going to move back to France after the dinner party, we were all wrong. She had spent all of her money on the decadent French dinner. While the guests ate, they all tried to hide the fact that they loved every flavor of the food. It was nothing they have ever had. Before the dinner party, they all agreed that they would all “remember we have lost our sense of taste.” This was not possible once they started eating and by the end of the dinner, one of the ladies preferred the wine to the water.

It was very nice to see that they began to let themselves enjoy the romanticized flavors of French cuisine. It was a “love affair between bodily appetite and spiritual appetite.”

It was interesting to see the clash of somber, bland, and repressed come together with romantic, indulgent, and rich French style. It was also interesting to see that the people at the dinner solved their social problems calmly instead of bitterly like it was previously seen. They became much more loving and appreciative of one another after the dinner. I would like to note a line said by Lorens, “All is vanity.” This Calvinist community was taught to self deny and not indulge in taste and pleasure; they did not want to be vain because that is also devilish. With all of this concentration on self denial, wouldn’t that be considered vain as well? In my opinion, they are all very self-centered on their own petty problems that happened long ago and their piety. To me, it seems very vain.

And then there was poor Babette who spent all of her money on this feast. There was no one to go back home to in France so she decided to spend her life in Denmark with this village of people. This dismal ending leaves us all to wonder if Babette ever leaves to start a new life, or if she stays and cooks more magnificent dinners. In the words of Babette herself, “An artist is never poor.”