Stella Gibbons
Cold Comfort Farm (1932)
Author: Stella Gibbons
Genre: Gentle
Plot Summary:
When Flora Poste is orphaned at the age of nineteen, she finds that her supposedly wealthy parents were not. Highly educated yet not inclined to actually go to work for herself, she visits briefly with a close friend, Mrs. Smiling, whilst deciding how to support herself on a 100-pounds-a-year inheritance. Living with family is one option, so after a few letters of inquiry to various relatives she chooses the oddest, the working-class Starkadder family of Howling, Sussex, who run the dilapidated Cold Comfort Farm. When she arrives, Flora finds a houseful of eccentrics living a squalid, joyless, existence under watch of “mad” matriarch Ada Doom Starkadder, who witnessed “something nasty in the woodshed” at age two (she is now 79) and never leaves her bedroom yet manages to assert a fearful influence over the house. Not at all content to let things be, Flora proceeds to assert her genteel talents to “tidy” the lives of her distant relatives in delightful and amazing ways.
Geographical Setting: The smart, fashionable, upper-class London, England, and an on-the-ropes farm in the Sussex countryside.
Time Period: 1932, however a book note states “The action of the story takes place in the near future.”
Series: Cold Comfort Farm series 1
Appeal Characteristics:
This leisurely paced, character driven book would be most appreciated by Anglophiles and those interested in a humorous look back at English farm/country life before the War. The author intentionally mocks (gently, of course) the overwrought writing style of Victorian and British writers such as Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters. Flora even name checks Austen’s Persuasion. It is also considered a parody of writers such as Thomas Hardy and D.H. Lawrence. Some of the novel is written in country dialect and uses words that might be unfamiliar to modern-day readers and/or non-British readers, yet it would not stop intelligent readers from simply consulting a dictionary. There are many funny and ridiculous situations and references (for instance, cows are named Graceless, Pointless, Feckless and Aimless, and a bull, Big Business); lovers of subtle, British humor will enjoy the storyline. Readers of the kinds of British literature Gibbons parodies may also enjoy the send-up. The story has a happy, romantic ending, with everyone finding a new life, new love or both.
Similar Authors: Thomas Hardy, D.H. Lawrence, the Bronte’s, Jane Austen.
Red Flags:
The novel alludes to sexuality, at times using barely recognizable euphemisms but is not at all vulgar. Meriam experiences multiple out-of-wedlock births; Seth’s rugged, manly sex appeal is barely containable; Mr. Mybug, an intellectual, is obsessed with sex and repeatedly tries, and fails, to engage Flora in conversation about it.
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