Cold Comfort Farm is a comic novel by Stella Gibbons, published in 1932. It parodies the romanticized, doom-laden accounts of rural life in some novels. The most immediate model was the work of Mary Webb.^[1] 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. More talented novelists in the tradition parodied by Cold Comfort Farm are D. H. Lawrence and Thomas Hardy; and going further back, the Brontë sisters. A novel (from French nouvelle Italian novella, new) is an extended, generally fictional narrative in prose. ... Stella Dorothea Gibbons (5 January 1902—19 December 1989) was an English novelist and poet. ... 1932 (MCMXXXII) was a leap year starting on Friday (the link will take you to a full 1932 calendar). ... Mary Webb (March 25, 1881 - October 8, 1927), was an English romantic novelist of the early 20th century, whose novels are set chiefly in the Shropshire countryside which she knew and loved well. ... Headlines of the Evening Standard on the day of London bombing on July 7, 2005, in Waterloo Station The Evening Standard is a British tabloid newspaper published and sold in London and surrounding areas of southeast England. ... D.H. Lawrence at age 21 (1906) David Herbert Lawrence (11 September 1885 – 2 March 1930) was an important and controversial English writer of the 20th century, with his output spanning novels, short stories, poems, plays, essays, travel books, paintings, translations, literary criticism and personal letters. ... Thomas Hardy Thomas Hardy, OM (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) — an English novelist, short story writer, and poet of the naturalist movement — delineated characters struggling against their passions and circumstances. ... The Brontë sisters, painted by their brother, Branwell c. ...

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. Sussex is a traditional county in South East England corresponding roughly in area to the ancient Kingdom of Sussex. ... (19th century - 20th century - 21st century - more centuries) Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s As a means of recording the passage of time, the 20th century was that century which lasted from 1901–2000 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar (1900–1999...

The speech of the Sussex characters is a parody of rural dialects (in particular the Somerset accent - another parody of Mary Webb, whose characters all tended to speak with a Somerset accent despite the fact they more often than not lived in a completely different county) 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). Somerset is a county in the south-west of England. ... Species Lonicera albiflora Lonicera arizonica Lonicera x bella Lonicera caerulea Lonicera canadensis Lonicera caprifolium Lonicera chrysantha Lonicera ciliosa Lonicera conjugialis Lonicera dioica Lonicera etrusca Lonicera flava Lonicera fragrantissima Lonicera x heckrottii Lonicera hirsuta Lonicera hispidula Lonicera interrupta Lonicera involucrata Lonicera japonica Lonicera korolkowii Lonicera maackii Lonicera x minutiflora Lonicera morrowii... Species See text. ...

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: A parson is a member of the Protestant clergy. ...

• 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: (universally known as "Mr Mybug") a writer who is in love with Flora. 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: A thatched pub (The Williams Arms) at Wrafton, near Braunton, North Devon, England The Kings Arms Pub in Sandford-on-Thames, Oxfordshire. ... Branwell Brontë, self portrait, 1840 Patrick Branwell Brontë (26 June 1817 – 24 September 1848) was a painter and poet, the only son of the Brontë family, and the brother of the writers Charlotte, Emily and Anne. ...

• 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.

Starkadder Family Tree

Image File history File links Cold-comfort-farm-genealogy. ...

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 Meriam 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.

... For other meanings, see vogue. ... City flag City coat of arms Motto: Fluctuat nec mergitur (Latin: Tossed by the waves, she does not sink) Paris Eiffel tower as seen from the esplanade du Trocadéro. ...

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 appears to be the late 1940s or even 1950s and contains developments that Stella Gibbons thought may be around at this time such as TV phones and air taxis. 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.

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.^[2] Christmas or Christmas Day is an annual holiday that marks the traditional birthdate of Jesus of Nazareth. ...

A sequel, Conference at Cold Comfort Farm, came out in 1949, and received mixed reviews.^[3]

Film, TV or theatrical adaptations

Cold Comfort Farm has been adapted for television twice. In 1968 a three-episode mini-series was made, starring Sarah Badel as Flora Poste, Brian Blessed as Seth, and Alastair Sim as Amos. In 1995 there was a made-for-TV film, starring Kate Beckinsale as Flora. 1968 (MCMLXVIII) was a leap year starting on Monday (the link is to a full 1968 calendar). ... Brian Blessed (pronounced //, or in the tradition of English poetry, Blessèd, born October 9, 1937) is an English actor, who came to fame as PC Fancy Smith in the BBC TV police drama series Z Cars. ... Alastair Sim Alastair Sim CBE (October 9, 1900 – August 19, 1976) was a Scottish character actor, whose comic appearance ensured him success in a string of classic British films. ... 1995 (MCMXCV) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Kate Beckinsale (born July 26, 1973 in London, England) is an English actress. ...

The BBC produced a four-part radio adaptation (tapes of the adaptation are copyrighted 1989, though the series was broadcast before that date). Miriam Margolyes played Mrs. Beetle. The British Broadcasting Corporation, usually known as the BBC (and also informally known as the Beeb or Auntie) is one of the largest broadcasting corporations in the world in terms of audience numbers, employing 26,000 staff in the UK alone and with a budget of more than £4 billion. ... Margolyes as Professor Sprout in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets Miriam Margolyes OBE (born May 18, 1941 in Oxford, England) is a British character actress. ...

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. This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...

References

1. ^ Stella Gibbons A website dedicated to Stella Gibbons, hosted by her nephew and biographer Reggie Oliver.
2. ^ Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm
3. ^ Conference at Cold Comfort Farm
4. ^ Plays by Paul Doust