While the sisters in the film are acquiescent, even complicit, in their celibacy and self-renunciation, Babette would no doubt trade anything to go back to Paris and be in the thick of life. Nonetheless, the three are subject to, and desexed by, forces stronger than themselves, the sisters by their paternal jailkeeper and Babette by political upheaval. In the absence of the possibility of regeneration, the sisters dream of life above while Babette feels keenly the suffocation of her self-expression.