The tale of Babette’s Feast, by the Danish writer, Isak Dinesen, centers on two sisters who have spent their lives in a remote, tiny village on the Western coast of Denmark, in the late 1880s.  It’s a somber, Protestant community that had been led by their late father who was the village pastor.  In their youth, there had been impassioned suitors for both the girls, men who had been passing through the community, but all were rejected by their pious father.  The women had given up hope of ever leaving their isolated home where they lived quiet lives of cold, gray thrift and efficiency.  Their faith was one of joyless duty.