Cold Comfort Farm

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. 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 instalments. 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.

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 Hawk-Monitor falls in love with her.
• Urk: forgets his desire for Elfine and marries Meriam.
• Mr Meyerbug: falls in love with 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.
• Flora: marries Charles.