A French affair

Mary Beth-

       Throughout history, and even in contemporary society, religion and repression have been known to go hand in hand. Namely, the Protestant doctrine is one example of such. Members of the Protestant church are taught not to take pleasure in many of the things that others enjoy everyday. One example of such is food. In the Dutch film, Babette's Feast, viewers witness the Protestant ethic in action, and discover how strong it is taken into consideration in the face of temptation.
       The film begins with the introduction of the two sisters, daughters of a Protestant minister. It goes on to add the detail that the two sisters spend all their time and money on good works, which is interesting considering in Norman O. Brown's book, Life Against Death, it is clearly stated that for Protestants, good works are not the way to win the love of the Lord. It is also mentioned that the sisters are exceedingly beautiful, and for this reason, they were not allowed to attend balls or parties. Men attended church only in hopes to lay eyes on them. This is one form of repression we see within the film. It is almost as if to say that if the women were to attend the social events, that the men would not be able to control their desire, and thus, in the Protestant spirit, they would rather eliminate all cause of that desire.
            Another example of repression is when Philippa, one of the sisters, is discovered by a French opera singer for her beautiful voice. Upon recognizing her talent he says, "Here is a diva. She will have Paris at her feet." Yet, he does not realize that the lifestyle he has in mind for her is not one her Protestant ethic supports. Instead, she prefers a peaceful and simple lifestyle. At one of her singing lessons she admits, "I am afraid of my own joy," which is a key phrase in understanding the repression that she was feeling. She had felt happiness and excitement throughout the course of her lessons with the opera singer, and this was an uncomfortable feeling for her. In order not to succumb to those feelings that most of us would consider normative and desired, she asks her father to end the singing lessons because she feels that it is the ethical decision.
       Years later, the opera singer sends a young French woman named Babette to the sister's home as a refugee from the war. The sisters take her in and she works without wages, everyday preparing the same dry fish and beer soup for them. After 14 years of work, Babette finally wins the lottery in order to return to France. She asks for just one thing; to have permission to prepare a traditional French dinner in commemoration of what would have been the minister's 100th birthday. The sisters agree, considering Babette had never asked anything else of them throughout the entire duration of the stay.
       Babette begins to prepare the feast and the sisters watch on in awe. They had never seen such food, since they were taught not to take pleasure in it. One night, one of the sisters had a dream that Babette's dinner is a symbol of the Devil, due solely to the fact that the dinner is meant to delight and please the senses, something viewed as evil to the Protestants. The Protestant congregation who were to attend the dinner made a pact that they would "have lost their taste during the meal." When they first sit to eat on the night of the feast they begin dinner by saying, "not a word about the food, we won't even think about it." Yet, as the dinner progressed, their "bodily appetites" began to overwhelm their "spiritual appetites," and they begin to enjoy the lavish dinner. They could not stand to repress themselves from something so wonderful.
        What I found most interesting, was that throughout the film, the Protestant congregation always went back to singing one specific song. A lyric from this song that struck me in particular was, "Never would You give a stone to the child who begs for bread." I found this to be extremely ironic. The Protestant congregation considered themselves to be God's children, and naturally, as humans and animals, they're desire for pleasurable substances, in this case, the metaphorical bread, was second nature. Yet, instead, they were repressing those desires and substituting them with the metaphorical "stone," or bland substances that gave no sense of pleasure what so ever. In other words, more suiting to the film, "Never would God give dry fish and beer soup to the Protestant congregation who begs for a lavish and pleasing French dinner." So then, what was the point of the repression that the congregation subjected themselves to all along?