The Chef and the Concubine: A Theory of Lived Christian Hospitality as the Imperfect Metabolism of Gift

Abstract

In the short story “Babette’s Feast,” literary master Isak Dinesen seeks to critique a particular expression of Christianity as ignorant and foolish. She does this, in part, by placing the lavishness of Babette’s gift in tension with the self-imposed poverty of a small-town religious order. In forming her critique, she ironically creates a space in which a more holistic rendition of the worldview she sought to undermine could be articulated and beautifully expressed. Subversive though she may be, her heroine is Christ, her plot is the Eucharist, her tenet is the gospel. Through Babette, Dinesen offers an (unintentional) apologetic for Christian hospitality as a lived theory, one that calls the reader to consciously enter into the imperfect metabolism of unending, transcendent gift.

This study considers the ideas of divergent scholars Elizabeth Newman and Jacques Derrida in order to glean a livable definition of Christian hospitality that is dramatized in “Babette’s Feast.” Attention then turns to a woman whom Babette has not yet met in scholarly conversation: the voiceless, victimized concubine of Judges 19. When the mysterious, miracle-inducing chef is introduced to the voiceless, tragedy-laden concubine, we can see how hospitality carries within it a certain undercurrent of war. Not the war of host over guest, oppressor over oppressed, or spiritual over material, but war of superabundance over privation. “Babette’s Feast” powerfully subverts the war-riddled privation of Judges 19 by declaring – through the extravagant circulation of gift – a very different act of war, one that transcends the story’s pages and finds its impact in our daily lives.