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Babette’s Feast, short story by Isak Dinesen, published serially in the Ladies’ Home Journal (1950) and later collected in the volume Anecdotes of Destiny (1958). It was also published in Danish in 1958. The tale concerns a French refugee whose artistic sensuality contrasts with the puritanical.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Feb 24, 2015 · “Babette’s Feast” is a short story by Isak Dinesen ( Karen Blixen ), the Danish author whose real life experiences managing a farm in British East Africa (colonial Kenya) led her to write Out of Africa (1937).
- Introduction
- Author Biography
- Plot Summary
- Characters
- Themes
- Media Adaptations
- Topics For Further Study
- Style
- Historical Context
- Compare & Contrast
Perhaps best known for Out of Africa (1937), Isak Dinesen is the pseudonym of Karen Blixen. Having established her reputation as an author in the 1930s and 1940s, she sought to increase her income in the 1950s by having stories published in American magazines. A number of her stories were featured in Ladies' Home Journal, including "Babette's Feast...
Karen Blixen (also known as Isak Dinesen) was born Karen Christentze Dinesen on April 17, 1885, near Copenhagen, Denmark. Her father was loosely related to royalty, and her mother was the daughter of a successful shipowner. When Dinesen was ten, her father committed suicide. This was devastating to Dinesen, who had shared a close relationship with ...
Part 1: Two Ladies of Berlevaag
In the town of Berlevaag lived an old man and his two daughters, Martine and Philippa. Martine had been named for Martin Luther, and Philippa (one year younger) had been named for Luther's friend Philip Melanchton. The man, called the Dean, was the leader of a small Lutheran religious sect with a faithful following in the small town. He and his daughters led a puritanical life, and the daughters were expected to forego marriage for the sake of leading the sect after the Dean's death. After th...
Part 2: Martine's Lover
As young women, Martine and Philippa had been strikingly beautiful. At the age of eighteen, Martine caught the eye of a young lieutenant, Lorens Loewenhielm, who then began visiting the Dean in order to see Martine. Despite his frequent visits, he could never manage to tell her of his feelings for her. Being around her made him feel small and worthless, so on his last visit he boldly kissed her hand and declared that he would never see her again. After this he resolved to forget about her and...
Part 3: Philippa's Lover
A year later, when Philippa was eighteen, a visiting opera singer from France heard her sing at church. The singer, Achille Papin, was renowned in Paris and was convinced that young Philippa could be the toast of Paris with her exquisite soprano voice. The Dean agreed to allow Papin to give the girl lessons, but when Papin rehearsed a romantic duet with her, he kissed her. She returned home and asked her father to write a letter telling Papin she would no longer accept instruction from him. P...
Babette Hersant
Babette is welcomed into the home of Martine and Philippa because she is in dire need of a place to stay. She has fled Paris after she and her husband and son participated in an uprising and her two men were killed. Under accusations of arson, she left the country to save her life, taking with her a letter from Achille Papin asking the sisters to take Babette into their home. Babette is confident, frugal, intelligent, congenial, loyal, and hardworking. She treats the sisters with respect and...
Lorens Loewenhielm
When the reader first meets Loewenhielm, he is a young lieutenant in the military, who is smitten with Martine. Never able to bring himself to reveal his feelings for her, he determines to continue his military career and be great so that he will not feel the awkwardness and unworthiness he felt around Martine. Many years later at the dinner, he is a guest. Having become a general with numerous achievements and medals, he feels self-confident entering the house that had intimidated him as a y...
Martine
Martine is the slightly older sister in the story. As a young woman, her beauty had caught the attention of many men (including Lieutenant Loewenhielm), but she remained loyal to her father's church and his expectation that she and Philippa would oversee it after his death. As a result, she never marries, and she and her sister live together throughout their lives. Martine is devout, kind, and non-judgmental. She honors her father's memory and loves her sister. Martine and her sister have led...
Food
The predominant theme of "Babette's Feast" is how food can transform the hearts of people and the atmosphere of a gathering. Prior to Babette's appearance on their doorstep, Martine and Philippa regarded food as something plain that had the sole purpose of providing their necessary sustenance. Because their lifestyle requires shunning the pleasures of the flesh, they had never considered food a luxurious experience to be enjoyed. Babette, on the other hand, has a very different perspective; s...
In 1987, Danish writer and director Gabriel Axel adapted "Babette's Feast" to film for Orion Pictures. It garnered an impressive following and won the 1988 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film.
After so many years of living a certain way, Babette reveals much about herself to Martine and Philippa at the feast. Given the ways the characters interacted during the feast, how do you think the...Imagine that you are in a similar position as Babette after she won the money and offered to prepare an authentic French meal. Consider your own family's background, and prepare a menu for a feast...Research the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Norway. If you have difficulty finding enough information, extend your research to other Scan-dinavian Lutheran churches. How has it changed since the ei...Babette considers herself a great artist because she is a great chef. Do you agree that cuisine is a form of art? In the story, what does her cooking have in common with other forms of art, and how...Biblical Allusion
Biblically well-read, Dinesen applies her knowledge of Scripture in "Babette's Feast" to underscore the strong religious overtones of Martine and Philippa's home they share with Babette. Throughout the story, subtle biblical allusions are introduced without reference, giving them the natural context of everyday thought that they have in the hearts of the sisters and the congregation. In describing the sisters' beauty in their youth, Dinesen explains that they caught the eyes of the men in the...
Simile
Perhaps because the Norwegian setting and characters were unfamiliar to her American readers ("Babette's Feast" was, after all, written for an American magazine), Dinesen scatters similes throughout her story to provide her readers with familiar images. This approach begins in the very first paragraph, where Dinesen writes of the small town of Berlevaag that it "looks like a child's toy-town of little wooden pieces painted gray, tallow, pink and many other colors." When Babette asks if she ma...
Norway in the 1870s
In the 1870s, Norway was a relatively peaceful, prosperous nation. Although it was under Swedish rule, Norway had been allowed to have its own constitution. This simply meant that rather than being governed by its own monarch, it was under the authority of Sweden. In the Parliament and among the people, however, a growing nationalist movement began to pave the way for Norway's eventual independence. Economically, Norway was healthy. Increased trade and more favorable tariffs brought Norway fu...
1870s: Although Norway has its own constitution and its Parliament is growing stronger, it is under Swedish rule. This and other factors feed a rising nationalism that results in Norway's independe...1870s: The state church is still the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Norway. Put in place after the Reformation in 1500, the state church is funded by the government. Most Norwegians are members of...1870s: About thirty years after Norway began to establish industrial businesses, such as textile factories, the economy is healthy and strong. During this period, the number of merchant ships in No...1870s: Women are second to men in Norwegian society. Although they won inheritance rights in the 1850s, women are still barred from pursuing higher education, and married women are not allowed to m...The story follows two religious sisters whose lives and community are altered forever when their French refugee maid, Babette, wins a lottery and uses her winnings to prepare a sumptuous French feast for her ascetic mistresses and their congregation.
Dive deep into Isak Dinesen's Babette's Feast with extended analysis, commentary, and discussion
Fifteen years after rejecting their suitors, Martine and Philippa are joined by a French woman named Babette, who appears at their doorstep exhausted, wild-eyed, and impoverished after escaping...
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