“Keep on taking until you’re ashamed of yourself”

“Keep on taking until you’re ashamed of yourself” is Moritz Jaspersen’s command during a childhood visit, and Smilla’s answer makes it the first of a long series of small victories over him and Danish manners. The words begin as a test conducted over cookies: Moritz tries to make shame govern how much Smilla takes, while she keeps taking and refuses to give him the response he expects. Later, the memory gives a sharper edge to Elsa Lübing’s offer of cookies, where hospitality is not simply hospitality but a means of drawing Smilla into confidence and complicity.

The Childhood Contest

The remembered scene starts with Moritz and Smilla visiting friends. When she takes a third helping of cookies, Moritz looks straight at her and tells her to continue until she is ashamed of herself. Smilla is not confident about her Danish, but she understands the challenge. She takes three more helpings without looking away from him. The room and the other visitors recede from the narrator’s account; the cookies lose their taste, and Moritz alone remains the focus of the contest.

Her reply, “I'm still not ashamed,” refuses the feeling the command seeks to produce. She takes three more helpings. Moritz then grabs the platter and puts it out of her reach. The gesture ends the contest physically, but the recollection names the outcome as Smilla’s victory: she has made him intervene rather than make her yield through shame. It is described as the first in a long series of small, important victories over him and over Danish manners.

Food, Shame, and Defiance

The episode gives food a double function. The cookies are something Smilla can keep accepting, but the real contest concerns who determines the meaning of that acceptance. Moritz turns a third helping into a test of self-consciousness; Smilla converts his test into an opportunity to persist. Her repeated taking is not a general declaration but a precise answer to his attempt to set the limit. Only when he removes the platter does the action stop.

The exchange also places the language barrier beside the emotional clarity of the scene. Smilla is unsure of her Danish, yet she understands what Moritz means and responds directly. The narrator’s recollection contrasts the social setting—the friends’ room and its Danish manners—with the narrowed intensity of the encounter between father and daughter. What could have passed as a minor disagreement over dessert becomes memorable because Smilla understands the stakes and refuses to perform the shame Moritz demands.

The Phrase’s Later Echo

The adult narrator recalls the scene while considering Elsa Lübing’s cookies. She has already described them as rich with butter and spices, the sort that could be eaten in great quantity before their ill effects became apparent. Elsa hands her the bowl, and the narrator reflects that Danes express their strongest feelings in conjunction with food. The memory of Moritz’s command gives that observation a personal history: for Smilla, food has been the setting of a contest in which taking, offering, and refusing can carry more than their surface meaning.

But Elsa’s cookies do not simply repeat the childhood episode. Smilla says they are meant to make her Elsa’s confidante and accomplice. Moritz’s command openly invites a struggle over shame, and Smilla answers it by continuing to eat. Elsa’s hospitality instead operates within a present exchange of trust and information. The remembered phrase therefore links two food scenes while marking their difference: one is a contest between father and daughter, the other a calculated overture from a woman seeking an ally.

Significance in Smilla’s Recollection

Smilla’s victory is small in scale and concrete in form: she keeps taking cookies until Moritz has to move the platter. Its importance lies in how she remembers it—not as an isolated prank, but as the first of many small victories against her father and the manners surrounding them. The scene establishes a pattern of resistance in which a seemingly ordinary social rule becomes something to test rather than obey automatically.

The phrase also condenses the tension between appetite and shame. Moritz’s words make continued taking a route toward embarrassment; Smilla’s answer rejects that prescribed ending. The platter’s removal is a limit imposed from outside, not an admission that she has become ashamed. When the phrase returns alongside Elsa’s bowl, the old contest remains legible but does not dictate the new one. The memory helps explain why Smilla reads gestures involving food as emotionally charged, while the different purposes behind the two offers keep the scenes distinct.