Rating: 3 Stars
Published in 1932,
Gibbons’ Cold Comfort Farm is one of
those farces that run rife with quirky characters and madcap antics. It’s an
undemanding read for a rainy afternoon; once you look past the tortured
metaphors, and the overly bright, brittle humor that characterizes so many British
books of that period.
Flora Poste is a
recently (nearly) impoverished young woman, who, scorning advice to support
herself by earning her way through life, decides instead to accept the
hospitality of relations with whom she’s barely acquainted. Brimming with good
intentions, good taste, and good sense, she descends on Cold Comfort Farm and
immediately sets to matchmaking, meddling, and reforming her socially
maladjusted kin – the Starkadders.
The Starkadders, each equipped
with their unique set of eccentricities, are securely under the thumb of
Flora’s Great Aunt Ada Doom, who has been wallowing in her own private psychosis
for the past several decades. How will Auntie’s forbidding yet fragile mental
condition endure the onslaught of Flora’s relentless charm and feminine
insight?
If the plot sounds
vaguely familiar to some of you, it should; Gibbons is patently channeling Jane
Austen’s Emma. While her literary influences
are quite evident, it’s not a good idea to try to combine the style and
sensibility of both Austen and Emily Brontë in a single book – simply put, the
twain shall never meet. However it’s not just that.
The comedy and deft
characterization in Emma stem partly
from the fact that the heroine consistently misreads people and situations, and
embroils herself in one mortifying scenario after another. The Emma we see at
the book’s end has had her ‘she-woman and mistress of the universe’ self-image
slightly deflated. In the process, she has grown in both self-awareness and
humility, thereby becoming much more likeable. Flora, on the other hand, undergoes
no such enlightening experiences. None of her plans go awry, and she’s very
clearly a superior being conferring her favors on lesser mortals. That makes a
huge difference to the tone of a book.
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