In the book Chocolat by Joanne Harris, Vianne Rocher arrives in a small French town and opens a chocolate shop. Vianne soon becomes a source of worry for the town's priest, Reynaud. Vianne's support of indulgence by chocolate, her distaste for religion, and her unorthodox beliefs scare Reynaud, who believes she is a temptress selling sin in the form of chocolate.
For Vianne, the making and eating of
food is the closest the temporal can come to the spiritual. “There is a kind of alchemy in the
transformation of base chocolate into wise fool’s-gold, a layman’s magic that
even my mother might have relished…The mingled scents of chocolate, vanilla,
heated copper, and cinnamon are intoxicating, powerfully suggestive; the raw
and earthy tang of the Americas, the hot and resinous perfume of the rain
forest…The Food of the Gods, bubbling and frothing in ceremonial goblets. The bitter elixir of life” (Harris 53). Vianne’s experience of food is not
sacrificial or burdensome on her part, it is liberating and pleasurable. Through her work in the kitchen, Vianne
becomes a sort of priestess, transforming the ordinary into the sacred. It is for this reason that Vianne knows
Reynaud is threatened by her shop:
Perhaps this is what Reynaud sense in my
little shop: a throwback to times when the world was a wider, wilder
place. Before Christ – before Adonis was
born in Bethlehem or Osiris sacrificed at Easter – the cocoa bean was
revered. Magical properties were
attributed to it. Its brew was sipped on
the steps of sacrificial temples; its ecstasies were fierce and terrible. Is this what he fears? Corruption by pleasure, the subtle transubstantiation
of the flesh into a vessel for debauch?” (Harris 53)
Vianne’s
smorgasbord of beliefs and practices troubles Reynaud. While Vianne isn’t necessarily demeaning
Christianity, her multitude of beliefs (the belief in the powers of chocolate
being key among them) destroys the culture of homogeneity and fervent devotion
to the church that Reynaud has worked to maintain.
How seriously should Reynaud take Vianne's presence in the community? Is indulgence in chocolate even a moral issue?
