The Cost of Hospitality

By the time Isak Dinesen’s novella, Babette’s Feast, was published in 1958, the author could clearly see that contemporary life is set up to maximize individual accomplishment as defined by professional and financial success.

Her story takes us back in time to offer an alternative, back to a fictional small and rather impoverished fishing village of Berlevaag in northern Norway during the late 19th century, back to a highly relational society that promotes mutuality, care and community among its members. At the core of such a community where feelings and actions are shared with dignity and respect, we find the gift of hospitality. 

Berlevaag is characterized as a community of pious Lutheran believers that revolves around the ministry and home of the Dean, father to two sisters, Martine and Philippa.  Both sisters forgo an opportunity to marry and leave their village to, instead, steward what meagre resources they have and dedicate themselves to provide food, care and counselling to their fellow villagers in times of strife and struggle.  When their father dies, their ministry becomes hospitality—a friendly and welcoming attitude toward guests, visitors, and strangers. Isak Dinesen’s novella Babette’s Feast was adapted into a play in 2018 and dedicated “to strangers in foreign lands, for their courage and their gifts.”

Dinesen draws a strong parallel between Babette’s servitude and the Christ who came not to be served but to serve according to the will of God.

When Babette arrives on the sisters’ doorstep as “a friendless fugitive, almost mad with grief and fear,” they take her into their home for the next twelve years. Imagine the cost of such hospitality—the concern, risk, even fear, of taking a complete stranger, a foreigner who does not speak your language or share your faith into your home and adding another mouth to feed, spending time and energy to build a relationship, and testing the boundaries of trust. Imagine the cost for Babette—giving up her previous life in Paris, settling in with two spinsters, adjusting to a strange climate, language, set of customs, food and diet. 

The word “hospitality” originates from the Latin word “hospes” that encompasses the roles of both provider and the recipient of hospitality because it captures the reciprocal nature of the practice.  This relationship between host and guest is easily seen in other English words that share the same root such as “hotel, hostel, hospital, and hospice.”

All of life is a gift given freely by a sovereign creator and supreme artist.  He has done the work; we are all invited to His table to feast.

We can see how the reciprocal nature of hospitality might challenge the radical individualism of our age which tries to optimize time, money and energy for the advancement of each person at the expense of care and concern for others. This preoccupation with personal advancement is illustrated in Babette’s Feast through the characters of Lorens Lowenheilm and Achilles Papin, the two suitors of the sisters, Martine and Phillipa.  Each of them visits then leaves Berlevaag to pursue vainglory.

Dinesen was keenly aware of the threat to spiritual well-being as posed by selfish ambition because she had been home-schooled in biblical studies by a pious mother who probably emphasized the pitfalls of a stubborn and rebellious human heart prone to unbelief and distrust in God.  Dinesen herself rebelled and pursued personal freedom and worldly passions until her life came crashing down at age 36 and she returned to her family estate to live out her days trying to reconcile her faith with her art. Babette’s Feast is her attempt to do exactly that.  

At the end of the play, Lorens returns to the village and is redeemed by Berlevaag hospitality, while Achille remains in Paris “grey, lonely, and forgotten” with only the memory of communal meals he once enjoyed at the Café Anglais where Babette—unknown to the Berlevaag villagers—was owner and chef extraordinaire. By contrast, Babette submits to the sisters’ authority while eschewing her culinary expertise and suffer her obligation to cook a traditional simple, foul, fish soup for a dozen years. Unlike the upward social mobility of Lowenheilm and Papin, Babette chooses a downward path—from Parisian artiste to Norwegian beggar. 

This is a very religious story.  Dinesen draws a strong parallel between Babette’s servitude and the Christ who came not to be served but to serve according to the will of God. Similarly, Babette pours all of her life into this feast.  The many years developing her culinary art in Paris and the many years of squashing it during her service to the two sisters are poured into the feast. Babette is not at the table eating and drinking with the guests but working at her calling in the kitchen cooking the most exquisite meal ever prepared in Berlevaag. 

Time, talent, treasure—she pours all her life into the feast—it costs her everything!  

After many years of living a comfortable existence as a celebrity chef in Paris then many years impoverished in Berlevaag, Babette wins 10,000 francs in a lottery.  She could return to Paris and resume some semblance of her previous life but instead pours every penny into this one dinner. Time, talent, treasure—she pours all her life into the feast—it costs her everything!  She is not Christ literally dying on a cross for the salvation of the world…but she emulates His self-sacrificing love through her actions of giving her utmost for His highest value to repair and heal the broken humanity around her.

Dinesen reminds us that we are all strangers in a foreign land.  We are all guests in God’s house.  All of life is a gift given freely by a sovereign creator and supreme artist.  He has done the work; we are all invited to His table to feast. As Lowenheilm comes to realize:

“Grace demands nothing from us…makes no conditions and singles out none of us in particular…takes all of us to its bosom and declares general amnesty!”  

This is the true cost of hospitality: to repent of individual sin and pride and submit to the God of grace, to the saving power of mercy and truth, to the kiss of righteousness and bliss. And what is purchased in return is a New Jerusalem, a new way of life, one that becomes visible at the end of this story when all the guests gather to celebrate what they just experienced as their ever-present hope: a community marked by sincere love, sharing what they have with each other, eating together regularly, generously serving neighbours, and living lives rich in virtue and vitality. As the snow falls, it covers Berlevaag in a hymn of peace and joy:  “Jerusalem, my happy home…”

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GEORGE DUTCH is a writer, performer, dramaturge, and Associate Artistic Director for 9th Hour Theatre Company. Babette's Feast plays November 6-15th, 2025 at The Gladstone Theatre in Ottawa, Canada.