Cold Comfort Farm

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Cold Comfort Farm is a comical novel by the British writer Stella Gibbons that first appeared in 1932. The novel parodies the romantic and sometimes very dramatic contemporary stories of Mary Webb , DH Lawrence , Sheila Kaye-Smith and Thomas Hardy , all of which are set in the country. Gibbons also caricatures older classics of British literature such as the works of the Brontë siblings .

The novel, for which Gibbons was awarded the Prix ​​Femina Étranger , is one of the classics of British literature of the 20th century. It was ranked 88th in the poll for the BBC Big Read , a list of Britain's favorite books that was created once in 2003 by the British broadcaster BBC. The British newspaper The Guardian included the novel in its list of the 1000 must-read novels in 2009. British critic Robert McCrum voted him again in 2014 among the 100 Most Influential English-Language Novels, justifying this choice with the influence the novel had on subsequent writers.

Cold Comfort Farm was the first novel that Stella Gibbons published. In 1940 a prequel appeared with the short story volume Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm and a sequel in 1949 with the novel Conference at Cold Comfort Farm . Although she was active as a writer for almost half a century after that, none of her later 22 novels achieved the fame and recognition of this first work. In an essay titled Genesis of a Novel for the British satirical magazine Punch , Gibbons himself compared the book to an “unencumbered old uncle to whom you have to be grateful for providing you with such ample pocket money, but who too is often just embarrassing and boring. "

content

After the death of her parents, the young Flora Poste realized that her inheritance was not enough to secure her livelihood - through her careful upbringing she was taught all the arts, but not that of earning her own salary. She therefore decides to seek refuge with her distant relatives who live on the isolated Cold Comfort Farm near the (fictional) village of Howling in Sussex . The residents of this farm - Aunt Ada Doom, the Starkadders and their extended family, as well as their workers - feel obliged to take in the young woman because they once did an injustice to Flora Poste's father that is not specified in the course of the novel.

The farm has run down and, as was typical of a specific form of romance novel of the 19th and 20th centuries, each of the residents has a long-standing emotional problem, the cause of which is either ignorance, hatred or fear. Flora, which is shown as sober, pragmatic and urban embossed woman decides with their specific skills and armed with their counselor Common sense (in the English original: The Higher Common Sense ) their relatives in solving their problems and to help so that you To make life on the farm as pleasant as possible.

Time of action

The narrator lets the plot take place after 1932. From individual comments it can be concluded that at the time of the plot the year 1946 is already past and that there was meanwhile a war between Great Britain and Nicaragua. Some technical innovations are also mentioned in passing: a telephone that allows callers to see each other and air taxis, which are widely used. It is also predicted that the elegant London district of Mayfair will develop into a slum over the next few years.

Characters from the novel

In London:

  • Flora Poste : The main character in the novel, a nineteen-year-old who was brought up in a boarding school and whose parents recently passed away.
  • Mary Smiling : A 26-year-old wealthy widow who Flora Poste is known to be with
  • Charles Fairford : Flora's cousin living in London who wants to be a pastor.

In Howling, Sussex:

  • Judith Starkadder : Flora's cousin, who is married to Amos and has been taken with her son Seth.
  • Seth Starkadder : youngest son of Amos and Judith and father of four illegitimate children. He is described as very handsome and has a magnetic attraction to women. However, his passion is film. This character is a parody of the character of the gamekeeper Oliver Mellors in DH Lawrence's novel Lady Chatterley .
  • Ada Doom : Judith's mother, a withdrawn widow who owns the Cold Comfort Farm and who is terrorizing everyone on the farm just by being there. She constantly complains that as a girl she saw something terrible in the woodshed. With Ada Doom, Gibbons caricatures the figure of the "Mad Woman in the Attic", the madwoman in the attic, an essential figure in Charlotte Brontë's novel Jane Eyre .
  • Adam Lambsbreath : A 90-year-old farmhand whose passion is the cows on the farm - and Elfine, one of the youngest residents on the farm.
  • Mark Dolour : Another farmhand who lives on the farm
  • Amos Starkadder : Judith's husband and preacher of a brotherhood whose favorite subject is the eternal torments of hell that await everyone
  • Amos' step-fathers: Micah , married to Susan; Urk , a bachelor to whom Elfine has been promised as her future wife since birth; Ezra , married to Jane; Caraway , married to Lettie; Harkaway .
  • Amos' stepbrothers: Luke , married to Prue; Mark , divorced from Susan and married to Phoebe
  • Reuben Starkadder : Amos and Judith's eldest son who will one day inherit Cold Comfort Farm. He's jealous of anyone who could prevent it.
  • Meriam Beetle : Maid on the farm and mother of Seth's four illegitimate children. These children were conceived in the spring months. With Meriam, as a woman who is close to nature, the births proceed without complications. She can resume work just a day later.
  • Elfine : the intelligent, nature-loving daughter of Amos and Judith, who falls in love with Richard Hawk-Monitor, the son of the local landowner
  • Mrs Beetle : a cleaning lady who is more sensitive than the Starkadders
  • Mrs. Murthe : Owner of The Condemn'd Man , a pub
  • Mr Meyerburg , referred to by Flora as Mr Mybug. He is a writer who stalks Flora and claims that the only reason she rejects his advances is because she is sexually uptight. He is working on a treatise to prove that the entire work of the Brontë sisters was written by their brother Branwell Brontë .
  • Rennet : unloved daughter of Susan and Mark
  • Dr. Müdel : Austrian psychoanalyst
  • Mr Earl P. Neck : American film producer

And also:

  • Graceless (“Irritant”), Aimless (“Aimless”), Feckless (“Useless”), and Pointless (“ Pointless ”): the cows on the farm that Adam Lambsbreath takes care of
  • Viper : the idiosyncratic gelding who is mainly used as a carriage horse
  • Big Business : The bull that spends most of its life in the stable and whose pitiful roar can often be heard

Further development of the figures

At the end of the novel, Flora, with the help of her advisor Common Sense, managed to solve the problems of all the main characters:

  • Meriam: Flora teaches her how to use contraceptives - the following spring, to the surprise of many, there is no birth of another illegitimate child.
  • Seth: Flora introduces him to a Hollywood producer and within a short time Seth becomes a movie star because of his attraction.
  • Amos: is persuaded by Flora to buy a car and become an itinerant preacher. His sermons on eternal damnation, from which few will escape, are heard by an American preacher. Amos therefore continues his preaching journey in North America. He loses all interest in Cold Comfort Farm and leaves the management of the farm to Reuben.
  • Elfine: Flora teaches her good manners and how to choose the right clothes. Elfine then takes everyone at a ball with her beauty and grace. Richard Hawk-Monitor proposes marriage to her before the ball ends. This is initially rejected by Richard’s mother until she learns that the Starkadder family also reject this connection. She reacts with outrage that a socially so low-down family has objections to her son marrying in, and so within a few weeks a marriage covenant is established.
  • Urk: At first deeply desperate that Elfine was leaving him, he quickly discovered his passion for the maid Meriam and married her.
  • Mr Mybug: falls in love with Rennet and eventually marries her.
  • Judith: Flora hires the psychoanalyst Dr. Tiredness. During a single lunch he manages to redirect Judith's obsession for Seth to him. She now lives in the institution he runs. Dr. Müdel's goal is to direct her long-term obsession to old churches in continental Europe.
  • Ada: With the help of an issue of Vogue magazine and a travel brochure, Flora Ada makes it clear that it is time to forget “the terrible things” that she saw in the woodshed as a child and to enjoy her life. Ada leaves for Paris.
  • Adam: Since life without Elfine is unimaginable for the 90-year-old, he becomes the cowherd at Hautcouture Hall, the large estate where Elfine lives after her marriage to Richard Hawk-Monitor. The cows Graceless, Aimless, Feckless and Pointless follow him there.
  • Big business: Flora lets the bull out of its stable. He now spends his days in the pasture.
  • Reuben: His lifelong dream is coming true: he will be running the Cold Comfort Farm in the future.
  • Flora marries Charles.

expenditure

literature

  • Reggie Oliver. Out of the Woodshed: The Life of Stella Gibbons . Bloomsbury Publications, London 1998. ISBN 0-7475-3995-2 .
  • Jonathan Daniel Greenberg. " Cold Comfort Farm and mental life", pp. 92-114, (with the sections "Some perversions of pastoral", "Gorgeous emotional wallowings", "Tolerable comfort"), in (author) Modernism, satire, and the novel , Table of Contents Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2011, ISBN 978-1-10-700849-6 , ISBN 978-1-13915590-8 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Oliver, p. 129
  2. ↑ 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read: The Definitive List , accessed November 1, 2014.
  3. ^ A b Robert McCrum, “ The 100 best Novels: no. 57 - Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons (1932) ”, The Guardian , October 19, 2014, accessed on November 12, 2014. Gibbons originally spoke of “some unignorable old uncle, to whom you have to be grateful because he makes you a handsome allowance, but who is often an embarrassment and a bore. "
  4. ↑ In the original Gibbons uses the phrase "she was discovered to possess every art and grace save that of earning her own living."