Babette’s Feast | Dinesen’s Babette’s Feast
In the following essay, Beck explores associations between the character of Babette and Saint Barbara in “Babette’s Feast.”
The meaning latent in the name of Babette Hersant, the main character in Isak Dinesen’s short story “Babette’s Feast,” associates Babette with Saint Barbara, thereby enriching the theological implications of the story.
The family name Hersant can be translated, “herself a saint.” The syllable sant is a reasonable cognate for both the French and English saint, and san literally suggests the Spanish san, as in San Francisco. According to the OED, sant historically has been a rather common Indo-European spelling for saint, as in Old Frisian, Medieval Dutch, and Medieval High...
[The entire page is 1058 words long]
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