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'''Cold Comfort Farm''' is a comic novel by Stella Gibbons, published in 1932. It parodies the romanticised, sometimes doom-laden accounts of rural life popular at the time, by writers such as Mary Webb. Gibbons was working for the ''Evening Standard ''in 1928 when they decided to serialise Webb's first novel, ''The Golden Arrow'', and had the job of summarising the plot of earlier installments. Other novelists in the tradition parodied by ''Cold Comfort Farm'' are D. H. Lawrence and Thomas Hardy; and going further back, Mary E Mann and the Brontë sisters.

Contents

Plot summary

Characters (in order of appearance)

Flora's solutions

Futurism

Other novels

Film, TV or theatrical adaptations

References

Footnotes

Plot summary

The heroine, Flora, stays at Aunt Ada Doom's isolated farm in the fictional village of Howling in Sussex. As is typical in a certain genre of romantic nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century literature, each of the farm's inhabitants has some long-festering emotional problem caused by ignorance, hatred or fear, and the farm is badly run. Flora, being a level-headed, urban woman, applies modern common sense to their problems and helps them all adapt to the twentieth century.
The speech of the Sussex characters is a parody of rural dialects (in particular Sussex and west country accents — another parody of novelists who use phonics to portray various accents and dialects) and is sprinkled with fake but authentic-sounding local vocabulary such as ''mollocking'' (Seth's favourite activity, undefined but invariably resulting in the pregnancy of a local maid), ''sukebind'' (a weed whose flowering in the Spring symbolises the quickening of sexual urges in man and beast; the word is presumably formed by analogy to 'woodbine' (honeysuckle) and bindweed) and ''clettering'' (an impractical method used by Adam for washing dishes, which involves scraping them with a dry twig).
Her portrayal of "Mr Mybug" is aimed at Hampstead intellectuals (particularly Freudians and admirers of D. H. Lawrence), but has also been seen as anti-semitic.

Characters (in order of appearance)

In London:

★ Flora Poste: the heroine, a nineteen-year old from London whose parents are deceased.

★ Mary Smiling: a widow, Flora's friend in London.

★ Charles Fairford: Flora's cousin in London, studying to become a parson.
In Howling, Sussex:

★ Judith Starkadder: Flora's cousin, wife of Amos. She has an unhealthy passion for her own son Seth.

★ Seth Starkadder: younger son of Amos and Judith. Handsome and over-sexed. Has a passion for the movies.

★ Ada Doom: Judith's mother, a reclusive, miserly widow, owner of the farm, who constantly complains of having "seen something nasty in the woodshed" when she was a girl.

★ Adam Lambsbreath: extremely ancient farm hand, obsessed with his cows and with Elfine.

★ Mark Dolour: farm hand.

★ Amos Starkadder: Judith's husband, and hellfire preacher at the Church of the Quivering Brethren. (''"Ye're all damned!"'')

★ Micah, married to Susan; Urk, a bachelor who wants to marry Elfine; Ezra, married to Jane; Caraway, married to Lettie; Harkaway: Amos's half-cousins.

★ Luke, married to Prue; Mark, divorced from Susan and married to Phoebe: Amos's half-brothers.

★ Reuben Starkadder: Amos's heir, jealous of anyone who stands between him and his inheritance of the farm.

★ Meriam Beetle: hired girl, and mother of Seth's four children.

★ Elfine: an intellectual, outdoor-loving girl of the Starkadder family, who is besotted with the local squire, Richard Hawk-Monitor of Hautcouture (pronounced "Howchiker") Hall.

★ Mrs Beetle: cleaning lady, rather more sensible than the Starkadders.

★ Mrs Murther: landlady of The Condemn'd Man public house.

★ Mr Meyerburg (whom Flora thinks of as "Mr Mybug"): a writer who pursues Flora and insists that she only refuses him because she is sexually repressed. He is working on a thesis that the works of the Brontë sisters were written by their brother Branwell Brontë.

★ Rennet: unwanted daughter of Susan and Mark

★ Dr Müdel: psychoanalyst.
And also:

★ Graceless, Aimless, Feckless and Pointless: the farm's cows, and Adam Lambsbreath's chief charge. Occasionally given to losing extremities.

★ Viper: the horse, pulls the trap which is the farm's main transportation

★ Big Business: the bull, spends most of his time inside the barn.
The interrelations of the characters are complex. The family tree below is an attempt to illustrate them as they stand at the end of the novel.

Flora's solutions

The novel ends when Flora, with the aid of her handbook ''The Higher Common Sense'', has solved each character's problem. These solutions are:

★ Meriam: Flora introduces her to the concept of contraception.

★ Seth: Flora introduces him to a Hollywood film director, Earl P. Neck, who hires him as a screen idol.

★ Amos: Flora persuades him to buy a Ford van and become a travelling preacher. He loses interest in running the farm and hands it over to Reuben.

★ Elfine: Flora teaches her some social graces and dress sense so that Richard Hawk-Monitor falls in love with her.

★ Urk: forgets his desire for Elfine and marries Meriam.

★ Mr Mybug: falls in love with and marries Rennet.

★ Judith: Flora hires a psychoanalyst, Dr Müdel, who, over lunch, transfers Judith's obsession from Seth to himself until he can set her interest on old churches instead.

★ Ada: Flora uses a copy of ''Vogue'' magazine to tempt her to join the twentieth century, and spend some of her fortune on living the high life in Paris.

★ Adam: is given a job as cow-herd at Hautcouture Hall.

★ Graceless, Aimless, Feckless and Pointless: go with Adam to Hautcouture Hall

★ Big Business: Flora lets him out into the sunlight.

★ Flora: marries Charles.

Futurism

An aspect of the novel overlooked by many recent adaptations is that the story was set in the future. Although the book was published in 1932, the setting is an unspecified near future, containing developments that Gibbons thought might have been invented by then, such as TV phones and air taxis. The book also refers (usually facetiously) to future social/demographic changes, such as the degradation of Mayfair into a slum district. She did seem to have predicted a Second World War, as it is alluded to in the experiences of Flora's boyfriend, but she probably did not appreciate the scale of that war. Nor can her 'futurism' anticipate social changes during and after that war which rendered some of the book's attitudes to class and Jews archaic.

Other novels

1940 saw the publication of ''Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm'' (actually a collection of short stories, of which ''Christmas'' was the first). It is a prequel of sorts, set before Flora's arrival at the farm, and is a parody of a typical family Christmas.^[1]
A sequel, ''Conference at Cold Comfort Farm'', was published in 1949 to mixed reviews.^[2]

Film, TV or theatrical adaptations

''Cold Comfort Farm'' has been adapted for television twice by the BBC. In 1968 a three-part serial was made, starring Sarah Badel as Flora Poste, Brian Blessed as Reuben, Peter Egan as Seth, and Alastair Sim as Amos. In 1995 there was a made-for-TV film, starring Kate Beckinsale as Flora, Rufus Sewell as Seth, Ian McKellen as Amos Starkadder and Angela Thorne as Mrs Hawk-Monitor. In 1996, this version also had a brief theatrical run in North America.^[3] ''Cold Comfort Farm'' is available on DVD in both the US and UK.
The BBC produced a four-part radio adaptation in 1981. Patricia Gallimore played Flora, and Miriam Margolyes played Mrs. Beetle. In January 1983, a sequel, ''Conference at Cold Comfort Farm'', set several years later, when Flora is married with several children, was broadcast (Part 1: "There have always been Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm", and Part 2: "Reuben's Oath - or Seven Good Men and True").
The book has also been turned into a play by Paul Doust.^[4] The plot was simplified a little in order to make it suitable for the stage. Many characters, including Mybug, Mrs. Beetle, Meriam, Mark Dolour and Mrs. Smiling, are omitted. Meriam's character was merged with Rennet, who ends up with Urk at the end. As a consequence, both Rennet's and Urk's roles are much bigger than in the book. Mrs. Smiling is absent because the action begins with Flora's arrival in Sussex; Charles appears only to drop her off and pick her up again at the end. Mark Dolour, though mentioned several times in the play as a running joke, never appears on stage. Finally, instead of visiting a psychoanalyst to cure her obsession, Judith leaves with Neck at the end.

References

★ The Checklist of Fantastic Literature, , Everett, Bleiler, Shasta Publishers, ,

Footnotes

1. ''Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm''
2. ''Conference at Cold Comfort Farm''
3. Review by Roger Ebert
4. Plays by Paul Doust