Isak Dinesen's cruelty and Babette's Feast

Recently watched Axel's 1987 film, Babette's Feast (see related post on Elliotswatching blog) and have gone back to read Isak Dinesen's short story on which the film was based; it's part of what I think was her final collection, Anecdotes of Destiny (1958). First thing to note is that Axel's adaptation is extremely faithful to the text of the story, down to the smallest morsels of dialog, with a few exceptions, all but one of which are insignificant: setting moved from Denmark to Norway (actually Denmak feels more correct, as that's ID's native land and where she lived when writing these late-life stories), the opera singer is more dashing and handsome in the story, the General's remarks about the feast are internal in the story and spoken aloud in the film - for obvious reasons, but they also give the other guests more guidance on how to eat and appreciate the feast. Maybe it's also significant that in the story Babette never learns to speak good Norwegian, whereas in the film she seems to be fluent. The only significant difference, though, occurs at the end, when Babette tells the two sisters who'd taken her in that she won't go back to France because all the people she'd loved are gone. The sisters say: But all these people you've named were aristocrats, the ones you'd fought against (B was a "communard," advocating the "rights of man") and who killed your husband and child. She notes that these people patronized her restaurant and knew what a great chef she was; she states that she can now, having completed the feast, be at peace for the rest of her life because she has proven that she is a "true artist." Virtually all the commentary I've read/seen re the film indicate that the feast is like a communion and that the rigid and restrained villagers become more loving and winsome, as if the feast were something beautiful and holy w/ the power of transformation. Sorry but I don't see this at all, aside from the fact that the villagers seem a little tipsy by the end - though the still can't bring themselves to say anything kind to B. I see her feast as an act of hubris and cruelty: She spends all her money on one meal, leaving herself once again completely at the mercy of the charity of others. The feast itself represents everything that the villagers - whether right or wrong - oppose and reject: earthly pleasure, extravagance, waste, diverting money from charity to personal welfare. Forcing them to eat this feast is cruel - and could certainly have made many of the villagers ill: after a lifetime of dried fish and bread they're eating quail and tortoise soup and caviar and fois-gras? And all so that B can see herself as an "artist"? What vanity! A true artist, by the way, would create a great dinner that all would enjoy and that could be created (and re-created) with what's at hand; a truly generous person would have given back to the community in some meaningful way, in gratitude for taking her in as a refugee. (Of course, however, B does have a right to resent living based on charity from others: In the film, we see the rude and sparsely  furnished room in which she lives, quite a contrast to the simple, Shaker-like rooms where the sisters live.) In all, Dinesen is a cruel writer - cruel to her characters and indifferent to their cruelty to others. (See related post on her story The Sorrw-Acre).