Plot Keywords Orphaned and broke at nineteen, she decides to live with relatives she has never met on a farm in Sussex. A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality study guides that feature detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, quotes, and essay topics. Stories of doomed lovers moved by animal passions on windblown moors, and often weighed down by overblown prose and adjective heavy descriptions. Parents Guide. Be the first to contribute! Seeing herself as her generation's future Jane Austen, Flora wants to choose relatives that are not necessarily wealthy, but are interesting from a literary perspective, whose lives she can "tidy up", and as such, she declines the offer of her wealthy second cousin Charles Fairford (Christopher Bowen), who is attracted to her. The main character, Flora Poste, is …

While she tries to find out the secrets behind the Starkadders and the farm, she also tries to change life on the farm to her sensibility, what she calls bringing them to a higher common sense. | The hired girl, Meriam, is another major subplot. This detailed literature summary also contains Topics for Discussion and a Free Quiz on Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons. Flora teaches her about birth control which Meriam thinks is flying in the face of nature, but which her mother, Mrs. Beetle, condones. They find the entire family, including Aunt Ada Doom, assembled downstairs for the annual counting, when the matriarch counts the Starkadders to see if anyone died. There is soon to be a ball in honor of Richard’s twenty-first birthday, and Flora arranges an invitation for Elfine, with herself as chaperon.

Set primarily in Sussex, England, circa 1930s, Cold Comfort Farm is a parody of late eighteenth/early nineteenth century agricultural literature, such as novels by D.H. Lawrence and Thomas Hardy.

©2020 eNotes.com, Inc. All Rights Reserved. In England in the early 1930s, twenty-year-old Flora Poste (Kate Beckinsale), recently orphaned, and left with only one hundred pounds sterling a year, goes to stay with distant relatives on Cold Comfort Farm. A recently orphaned young woman goes to live with eccentric relatives in Sussex, where she sets about improving their gloomy lives. This study guide contains the following sections: This detailed literature summary also contains Topics for Discussion and a Free Quiz on

Set primarily in Sussex, England, circa 1930s, Cold Comfort Farm is a parody of late eighteenth/early nineteenth century agricultural literature, such … | The Starkadders expect Elfine to marry Urk, a farm cousin. Click here to see the rest of this review Cold Comfort Farm Summary & Study Guide includes comprehensive information and analysis to She writes to various relatives to ask if she might stay with them and chooses the Starkadders, an aunt and cousins who live at Cold Comfort Farm in Howling, Sussex.

Abhorring messes similar to Jane Austen's Emma, Flora takes on the challenge to tidy up Cold Comfort Farm and everyone on it.

Opposite the Majestic Cinema, Flora is reminded of Mr. After all Flora's meddling has come to fruition and the farm is tidied up, Flora seeks her own happy ending. They provided her with an expensive education that did not prepare her to earn her living. Before the night is over, Richard announces their engagement.

Flora drops hints, but she is not invited to meet Aunt Ada Doom. Flora spends a day with her, managing to convince her there is a lot more fun to be had for a lady of wealth than being cooped up in a bedroom. eNotes plot summaries cover all the significant action of Cold Comfort Farm. Flora begins to worry about Elfine, who is apparently in love with Richard Hawk-Monitor, the scion of country gentry who live nearby. Flora tackles each family member individually, despite Aunt Ada's distress: she changes her cousin Elfine from an artsy woodland sprite into a lady eligible for marriage to the wealthy man she loves; she helps her cousin Seth find a career in the talkies, his passion, through her Hollywood producer friend; she encourages religiously fanatic Uncle Amos to go on a preaching tour, getting him off the farm so her cousin Reuben can take it over as this is his greatest wish; and she sends her depressing Aunt Judith into therapy and off to explore European churches.

help you understand the book. A writer staying in the nearest town, Mr. Mybug, develops a crush on Flora, but as he's rather fat and she doesn't care much for intellectuals, she does her best to avoid him. Cold Comfort Farm Summary.

Seth makes suggestive advances to her, but Flora discovers that his great love in life is not women, as she has assumed, but “the talkies.” Though exhausted by her interaction with these family members, Flora decides she must become acquainted with the other Starkadders. Fortunately, he meets one of the Starkadder women and marries her instead. Flora announces Elfine’s engagement, which causes Urk to fall into the sandwiches. She gets pregnant every spring when the "sukebind" blooms and has just had her fourth child by an unknown man. 1930's London. Thanks for exploring this SuperSummary Plot Summary of “Cold Comfort Farm” by Stella Gibbons. Already a member? This study guide consists of approx. Complete summary of Stella Gibbons' Cold Comfort Farm. Like a fairytale, Charles, the man she loves, comes to pick her up in his airplane and they declare life-long love toward one another as they return to London. Flora secretly grooms the girl and gives her private instruction in good taste and deportment. She has not left the farm in twenty years.

Our summaries and analyses are written by experts, and your questions are answered by real teachers. Appalled by the condition of the farm and by the many violent and brooding Starkadders, Flora determines to tidy up life at Cold Comfort Farm. Conferring with Cousin Judith, Flora learns that Judith’s husband, Amos, did a great, secret wrong to Flora’s deceased father. She visits a friend near London to decide what to do and develops a warm relationship with her cousin, Charles Fairford. Cold Comfort Farm Summary. Despite being in the leisure class, Flora only has a meager allowance on which to live. | The Starkadders believe they must never leave the farm or Aunt Ada Doom will have one of her fits of madness, but Flora can see the madness as a little too convenient. In England in the early 1930s, twenty-year-old Flora Poste (Kate Beckinsale), recently orphaned, and left with only one hundred pounds sterling a year, goes to stay with distant relatives on Cold Comfort Farm. Meriam ends up marrying one of the farmhands.

The interesting aspects of Judith's invitation are that she wants to atone for a wrong committed on Robert Poste, but she will not divulge what that wrong was, and that she and her family will not leave the doomed farm since a Starkadder has always lived on Cold Comfort Farm. There are a number of subplots that also take place. Flora glimpses her seventeen-year-old cousin, Elfine, who never attended school and spends most of her time wandering about the moors writing poetry.

The novel is best enjoyed by understanding it as a parody on rural literature and character archetypes as the story builds on a conventional structure toward a satisfying ending. Coarse and filled with lust for the land, Reuben is the only true farmer among the Starkadders. Just click the "Edit page" button at the bottom of the page or learn more in the Synopsis submission guide. Rather than get a job, she decides to live off of the generosity of one of her relatives. This detailed literature summary also contains Topics for Discussion and a Free Quiz on Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons.

Elfine makes a grand entrance at the ball. 54 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more – everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Cold Comfort Farm.

She accompanies him to his sermon at the Church of the Quivering Brethren and twice proposes that he can do even more good by preaching throughout the country. Aunt Ada agrees and flies off to Paris on Elfine's wedding day. everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Cold Comfort Farm. Flora suspects, however, that Mrs. Ada Doom Starkadder, her deceased mother’s sister, is the real curse. Aunt Ada Doom stays in her room and rules the family with a will of iron.

You'll get access to all of the Taglines Synopsis This madness supposedly is the result of something Aunt Ada saw in the woodshed when she was a child.

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons. eNotes.com will help you with any book or any question. Flora's biggest problem is Aunt Ada Doom, but the farm will never really be tidy as long as she is brooding in her room. Cold Comfort Farm is a hilarious satire of the sort of rural romances that were popular at the time. There is a general sense of depression and gloom, the very farm appearing like "a beast about to spring.". Charles promises to rescue Flora in his plane whenever living on the farm becomes too much for her. Adam Lambsbreath, the ninety-year-old farmhand, meets Flora at the station. He suspects that Flora wants to take over the farm, but when she assures him that the farm is the last thing she wants, she wins him over.