July 2010 Book Discussion: Cold Comfort Farm

[margaine]

discuss! :)

so many books on my mental tbr list . . . I should get to this before the month is out, but it might be a while

[margaine]

I got my copy of the book today. I'm not sure when I'll get to it, there are just so many books in the world and so little time!

[neilgee]

I got mine yesterday. Had to buy it from Waterstones as the library didn't stock it.

The description of Mrs Smiling in chapter one made me smile:

Mrs Smiling's character was firm and her taste civilized. Her method of dealing with wayward human nature when it insisted on intruding it's grossness upon her scheme of life was short and effective; she pretended things were not so: and usually, after a time, they were not.

because it summed up somebody I've known for eleven years without me ever being able to phrase it like that.

Still, given that the name of the place that Flora is going to is Cold Comfort Farm and that the theme is families I suppose that Mrs Smiling is not going to play a large part in the rest of the novel.

[Winifred]

Having reread the book, and having thoroughly enjoyed the over-the-top gothic landscape descriptions, it occurs to me that maybe I'll start a column for our own lurid landscape portraits. Let me get back home first.

*Reminder to self: include the cry of Estonian seagulls.*

[neilgee]

Sorry Winifred but I can't really say I noticed the landscape descriptions. Those are the parts I tend to read without really taking in, which is a long-standing fault of mine.

I'm about two thirds of the way through now and I loved Amos's description of his religious plight: "'Twill be a new sin to wrestle with, the sin of carin' whether my soul is puffed up or not. And how can I tell, when I am feelin' puffed up when I preach, whether I'm saving souls and therefore it wouldn't matter if I was puffed up? Aye, and what right have I to puff myself up if I do save them? Aye, tes a dark and bewilderin' way" on P191 of my copy. So typical and comical, but sums up a certain kind of religious mentality very well.

What puzzles me about the novel so far (I was going to sat it "throws me" but I'm not sure that everyone would understand what I meant) is that Flora comes across as something of a spoilt rich bitch in the first few chapters with Mrs Smiling and yet all her assumptions about the retardiness of Cold Comfort Farm and it's inhabitants seem to follow her ideas from the beginning.

I don't know how other readers feel about this but I find it a triful unrealistic. How does Flora know how to deal so well with these strange people afters no apparent real experience of life beforehand?

[margaine]

I've read just the first few chapters so far. It is really amusing. I love the way the author puts stars next to the paragraphs that are important to pay attention to. :) That is really funny and rather clever for a book from earlier in the twentieth century. I think it is the gothic-y descriptions that are often starred? Not sure, I've only seen two starred parts so far.

Neil's note reminded me of something I found particularly funny from the beginning of the book. I really liked the whole thing about how Mrs. Smiling has "Pioneers O" who are all working in foreign lands and have ridiculous nicknames. For someone who has spent a good amount of time reading and thinking about the colonial era of England and France, I enjoy seeing it represented this way in this book.

[neilgee]

As I reached the last few pages it dawned on me that this novel was a parody, not meant to be read seriously, but a parody of what I had no idea until I read the introduction (I always read introductions after I've read the novel) when I discovered that it was aimed at an enormously popular author in 1932 (when CCF was published) called Mary Webb who isn't read anymore because her novels were not very good although the "rural" style that Stella Gibbons is parodying is broad enough to include authors like DH Lawrence and Thomas Hardy.

This is not uncommon in literature. Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey is another novel that has survived whilst the "Gothic" novels it was mocking are not read anymore, and there are other examples such as the work of Thomas Love Peacock, but the thing with a skit outliving it's subject is the skit has to be good enough to stand alone when the thing it is having a joke at is not around for reference anymore and I'm just not sure that Cold Comfort Farm is good enough to do that.

I can appreciate the mocking of the Lawrence devotee Mr Mybug who "sees every bud as a phallus and every hill as a breast" after having to study Lawrence for exams many years ago, but for the rest of it I don't really know what I'm supposed to be laughing at. Sorry.

[Winifred]

What puzzles me about the novel so far (I was going to sat it "throws me" but I'm not sure that everyone would understand what I meant) is that Flora comes across as something of a spoilt rich bitch in the first few chapters with Mrs Smiling and yet all her assumptions about the retardiness of Cold Comfort Farm and it's inhabitants seem to follow her ideas from the beginning.

I don't know how other readers feel about this but I find it a triful unrealistic. How does Flora know how to deal so well with these strange people afters no apparent real experience of life beforehand?

IMHO, maybe Ms Gibbons was having some sly fun with Flora's all-encompassing knowledge. She points out repeatedly that Flora's knowledge of many things comes from novels (sex, childbirth - and that childbirth is the more veiled of the two in young ladies' novels), and, after all, she is the protagonist in a novel. It's almost as if Flora is a sort of in-house (in-book) authoress, rewriting the Gothic novel from within (after all, her aim was to live so she could write later in life), and (to mix metaphors) combing out all the Romantic tangles and snarls into nice, classical, rational ringlets. So, she comes into a hopelessly windblown, Gothic setting, and sets about tidying up, and the fictional part to me is: totally successfully.

I just enjoy this book. It makes me grin repeatedly, from Ms Smiling to Mybug to the visual phone (after all, the novel is set slightly in the future) to Seth slouching about, to the Hollywood director, to agri-moniacal Reuben's chicken feather counting (which, sadly, is just what is needed to keep a farm profitable. My uncle counted his cattle every day. Every day.) Note that Flora was wrong about the name Reuben, at least in this case.

There is a lot of parody, but I think that, also, she is a voice very much like Jane Austen's in Sense and Sensibility, or, any of Austen's novels: reason makes a more comfortable lifestyle than wild abandon. Which is really the lesson of adolescence, again, imho.

There is also a definite come-to-terms-with-the-matriarch theme in this book, what do others think?

[Maryd.]

Once again, I had trouble finding the book. I have what - one week to find it and read it... Can you believe this? Anyway... Things have slowed down at home. Maybe I can miraculously read it in a few days.... Stranger things have happened.

[margaine]

Once again, I had trouble finding the book. I have what - one week to find it and read it... Can you believe this? Anyway... Things have slowed down at home. Maybe I can miraculously read it in a few days.... Stranger things have happened.

It's always fine if you contribute after the month is over!

[Maryd.]

Thanks Margarine... Might do. I love my country, I just hate that we are always short of books. Well, good quality ones that is!
Thanks I check it out tomorrow.

[margaine]

Having finished, I think I am somewhere in between Neil and Winifred in my enjoyment of this book. In part, I found it very amusing. But amusement can only go so far and can't really carry a full-length novel all the way through, at least not for me. There is a story, plot, characters, but all of these are set among such silliness that it gets a bit tiring after a while because the jokes are of the same sort throughout the entire text. I enjoyed the first half of the book more than the second simply because I got a bit tired of all of it.

Perhaps Neil is right and that part of the book's charm is lost on those unfamiliar with the texts that are being mocked. I'm sure there is a lot of it that was lost on me. But I could definitely still appreciate a lot of what is silly and funny. And some of it I really did enjoy. Just not all the way through the whole book.


IMHO, maybe Ms Gibbons was having some sly fun with Flora's all-encompassing knowledge. She points out repeatedly that Flora's knowledge of many things comes from novels (sex, childbirth - and that childbirth is the more veiled of the two in young ladies' novels), and, after all, she is the protagonist in a novel. It's almost as if Flora is a sort of in-house (in-book) authoress, rewriting the Gothic novel from within (after all, her aim was to live so she could write later in life), and (to mix metaphors) combing out all the Romantic tangles and snarls into nice, classical, rational ringlets. So, she comes into a hopelessly windblown, Gothic setting, and sets about tidying up, and the fictional part to me is: totally successfully.

I really liked that part of the book - the way Flora bases her knowledge off of other books. But I think some of that cleverness on the part of Gibbons is more prominent towards the beginning rather than the end of the book, although Flora does continue to rely on the Pensees. But I thought the childbirth part to really be one of the best!


I just enjoy this book. It makes me grin repeatedly, from Ms Smiling to Mybug to the visual phone (after all, the novel is set slightly in the future) to Seth slouching about, to the Hollywood director, to agri-moniacal Reuben's chicken feather counting (which, sadly, is just what is needed to keep a farm profitable. My uncle counted his cattle every day. Every day.) Note that Flora was wrong about the name Reuben, at least in this case.

What is the deal with that visual phone? I didn't really understand where that came from. I didn't realize the novel was set slightly in the future, but that does explain some things that confused me. I wonder why Gibbons chose to do that? I was so confused by the mention of a war in '46, knowing that the book was published in '32, but now I understand. I think I missed some of the other future aspects, and I was just totally mystified by what a video phone was doing in the middle of what I assumed was some non specifically early-20th century setting!


There is a lot of parody, but I think that, also, she is a voice very much like Jane Austen's in Sense and Sensibility, or, any of Austen's novels: reason makes a more comfortable lifestyle than wild abandon. Which is really the lesson of adolescence, again, imho.

There is also a definite come-to-terms-with-the-matriarch theme in this book, what do others think?

Hmm, I feel uncomfortable taking any of the themes at face value, as they are set so deeply in parody and humor. I feel like Gibbons might be laughing at us for attempting to take any of it seriously at all. But perhaps not.

[neilgee]

Hmm, I feel uncomfortable taking any of the themes at face value, as they are set so deeply in parody and humor. I feel like Gibbons might be laughing at us for attempting to take any of it seriously at all. But perhaps not.

Yes I would agree (relate?) with what you are saying here, Marge. Towards the end I got the feeling that I was missing an "in" joke (although I really enjoyed the first few chapters).

[Winifred]

I think we can all agree to put CCF in the light summer reading category! Or, at least the first half :)

It did inspire me to pick up Austen's Northanger Abbey again, which I read way too quickly for a class a couple of years ago, to compare the parodies.

[margaine]

It did inspire me to pick up Austen's Northanger Abbey again, which I read way too quickly for a class a couple of years ago, to compare the parodies.

I have been wanting to read that as well. And this will add another layer of interest to it.