Babette's Feast

All the characters who come to Berlevaag, including Babette, Loewenhielm, and Papin, are looking for something. Babette is searching for refuge and fulfillment as an artist after she is separated from her craft by circumstance. Loewenhielm’s first visit to Berlevaag ends in shame, and on his second trip, he hopes to find spiritual peace and fulfillment amid his hollow life of earthly riches and achievements that have failed to ease the pain of lost love. Papin goes to Norway on a quest for inspiration and ends up finding it in Philippa’s angelic voice; but then he loses it when he is too impulsive and crosses a boundary that Philippa cannot forgive. He regrets that transgression for the rest of his life, even going so far as to express it in his letter to the sisters 15 years after the event:

When tonight I think of you [Philippa], no doubt surrounded by a gay and loving family, and of myself: gray, lonely, forgotten by those who once applauded and adored me, I feel that you may have chosen the better part in life. What is fame? What is glory? The grave awaits us all!” (13)

Papin’s letter is an example of dramatic irony, as the reader—but not Papin—knows that Philippa does not have the “gay and loving” family he imagines. This moment also establishes tension in Karen Blixen’s portrayal of artistry. Papin’s rejection of fame seems to indicate that Philippa was right to repress her budding ambition and musical artistry, yet the letter’s conclusion, which references singing for the angels in heaven, hints at the story’s ultimate conclusion: that the practice of artistic genius is an inherent spiritual good. 

Philippa and Martine are as affected by their encounters with Papin and Loewenhielm as those men are by them, but their fear of pleasure—as expressed through music and romantic love—inhibits them from achieving their own fulfillment. The sisters and the townspeople of Berlevaag exemplify The Paradox of Religious Devotion. The Brothers and Sisters of the Dean’s ecclesiastical following are stalwart in their faith, even after the Dean passes away, but after his death, they start having interpersonal problems and are ultimately unhappy with their lives, despite rejecting all earthly pleasures as their religion tells them they must. This presents a paradox when Babette, Loewenhielm, and Papin all travel to Berlevaag in search of something to better their lives, be it refuge from war, spiritual enlightenment, or creative inspiration. The people who live there aren’t satisfied with their lives, either, but unlike the others, they have nowhere to go to seek fulfillment. Babette’s arrival in Berlevaag introduces the theme of Life as a Refugee. She is a refugee in the political sense while the others seek a spiritual haven. As Babette improves the quality of food and care in the village through her unacknowledged talents, Blixen suggests that the pious townspeople lack fulfillment because of, rather than in spite of, their rejection of sensory pleasure.

Martine and Philippa are also missing a key element in their lives that causes persistent distress: a solution to all the discord in their community. Attempting to follow in their father’s footsteps as spiritual leaders, “They had endeavored to make peace, but they were aware that they had failed” (18). Despite their efforts, many of their Brothers and Sisters continue to clash over ancient personal disputes. Martine and Philippa are also weighed down by the knowledge that their French maid once participated in a violent revolution, but they never discuss this with any of their neighbors. In fact, they do not discuss much of anything; the sisters can never even bring themselves to talk about the incident with Papin that distressed Philippa so much, as “they lacked the words” (12). This passage indicates that, because they dedicated their lives to asceticism, they were cut off from the full spectrum of human experience that includes passion, confusion, and growth. Martine also remains silent when she meets Loewenhielm, never speaking to him or talking about him to anyone after he leaves Berlevaag.

The transformation of the characters is set into motion by the inciting incident, which occurs when Babette wins the French lottery and proposes she prepare a celebratory dinner. This positions nearly the first full half of the story as exposition, as Karen Blixen carefully details the prior encounters between and experiences of the characters. This lengthy backstory lends dramatic stakes to the events of the dinner, as the reader has a more immediate understanding of the events and emotions that lead up to the dinner.  Even though Martine and Philippa are frightened of the idea of eating such rich foreign food in place of their typical plain fare, they agree to Babette’s proposal. The narrative structure emphasizes that this decision is a significant deviation from their previous behavior, in which they have carefully avoided new or intense experiences.

Babette’s dinner highlights the theme of Physical and Spiritual Nourishment. At the dinner, most guests are experiencing some form of conflict. Loewenhielm is in turmoil over the vanity of his past decisions. Martine and Philippa are worried about the moral implications of the dinner, and about one dish in particular: turtle soup, which Babette made from a real-life turtle, which is incomprehensible to them. The Brothers and Sisters are anxious about the food and its implications as well, in addition to their own personal problems.

The dinner has the effect of a magic spell, changing the guests’ attitudes without them realizing it. The alcohol they consume is in large part responsible; with the exception of Loewenhielm, none of the guests regularly drink alcohol and their mild inebriation contributes to the convivial atmosphere. However, Blixen implies that other forces are at play, in particular, the combination of community, enjoyment of the senses, and venturing outside one’s comfort zone. The magic quality persists in that no one in the community quite remembers what happened at the dinner afterward. Lorens eats and drinks quickly, as if “seized with a queer kind of panic” (33), and the other guests, having vowed to make no remark upon the food whatsoever, nonetheless “grew lighter in weight and lighter of heart the more they ate and drank” (34). Over the course of the meal, anxieties all begin to fade away.

The more of the dinner that Lorens consumes, the more he is reminded of his dinner at the Café Anglais, and he recognizes the “Cailles en Sarcophage” dish in Babette’s feast (35). Of the chef who created it (“a person known all over Paris as the greatest culinary genius of the age, and — most surprisingly — a woman!”) (35), foreshadowing the reveal that Babette is the chef in questions. The diner then exclaims:

[T]his woman is now turning a dinner at the Café Anglais into a kind of love affair — into a love affair of the noble and romantic category in which one no longer distinguishes between bodily and spiritual appetite or satiety!” (35).

Experiencing a luxurious meal in the context of religious piety, Loewenhielm is finally able to reconcile spiritual and physical pleasure not as opposing, but as complementary forces. Notably, his exclamation references courtly love, which is expressed without sexual consummation and is the model for his and Martine’s agreement to a spiritual connection. After exulting in the dinner, Lorens makes a more formal speech. Here he demonstrates that, no longer depressed and directionless, he now feels enlightened and invigorated by the meal he just consumed and the wonder of its appearance in a place like Berlevaag. He speaks at length on the infinite quality of grace and the folly of men: “We tremble before making our choice in life,” he says, then exclaims, “See! That which we have chosen is given us, and that which we have refused is, also and at the same time, granted us” (36). This is in reference to his rejection of religious piety in his youth, which he had forever regretted afterward. Yet here he is, undergoing a beautiful spiritual experience thanks to a meal. To sum the speech and his feelings up, he repeats a quote previously made by the Dean while he was still living: “For mercy and truth have met together, and righteousness and bliss have kissed one another!” (36). This quote, which previously led to his shame over wanting to kiss Martine, now allows him to express the revelation that pleasure and piety are both necessary for spiritual fulfillment. Choosing one or the other is irrelevant, he suggests, because God will always lead a person toward the reconciliation of these forces.

Through the pleasure of sharing a wonderful meal, the other guests at the table find the solutions to their problems, as well. One by one, they resolve their petty differences and make peace with their Brothers and Sisters. Martine and Philippa, too, are impressed by the meal; Martine does not even realize that she consumed the dreaded turtle in the soup.

The culmination of the main characters’ transformation lies in two incidents. The first is that Martine and Loewenhielm finally have a conversation, in which their feelings of the past are resolved. They agree to a spiritual love, which seems fulfilling to them both. The second is that Martine and Philippa finally come to see who Babette really is when she reveals herself as the former chef at Café Anglais. The sisters never suspected that Babette was “a great artist” (43) because she maintained her role as a maid for many years. When Philippa tells Babette that she “will enchant the angels” (45), she echoes the words of Papin in his letter to the sisters and his special message to Philippa in particular. At last, the sisters have found the words to discuss what it means to be a great artist, and like Papin, they relate the experience to spiritual worship, suggesting that the expression of talent is a moral good with the power to enrich even a pious life. Blixen leaves it ambiguous as to whether the experience of Babette’s dinner changed the guests permanently or if they were only momentarily freed from their stoic ways. The sisters and Babette continue to live their lives as they had before the dinner, suggesting that the transformation may be spiritual (or otherwise internal) without affecting their outward lives. This resistance to fame or new wealth also emphasizes Blixen’s portrayal of artistic practice as a spiritual good; Babette prepared the feast not for acclaim, but to bring pleasure to others. In this way, her artistry becomes an act of service similar to those the sisters have dedicated their lives to.