Talk:Cold Comfort Farm

Novels Start‑class Mid‑importance

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Novels, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to novels, novellas, novelettes and short stories on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and contribute to the general Project discussion to talk over new ideas and suggestions.NovelsWikipedia:WikiProject NovelsTemplate:WikiProject Novelsnovel articles Start This article has been rated as Start-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. Mid This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Love the movie; anyway seems like the biographer's web site is down (re-directs to ad site). A quick google search did not turn up anything useful as replacement. I noted the broken link in the first reference (1-3 are broken), but wasn't sure what format was best so please correct as I did not see a standard format in the help pages. Thanks. Pthorson 02:45, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Cold Comfort Farm was forced upon me to read, but I did not even read it. But what I did read, was very boring and pointless. Whomever seems to think this kind of humor is humorus. It is not.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.132.236.39 (talk • contribs) 00:43, 31 May 2006

I think it is a marvelous book. I saw the movie before reading the book so every character was brought to life.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.85.50.2 (talk • contribs) 15:56, 3 July 2006

It is a marvellous bok. It's very English 1930s, but the main message is still relevant today: doom-mongering, melodramtic, miserable people are a bit ridiculous. If you know a bit about Stella Gibbons' own life- and her melodramtic, violent, tyrannical, alcoholic father who was forever threatening to kill himself- you can really see what this book is about. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.196.239.189 (talk • contribs) 14:33, 7 February 2007

I wonder why there's no mention of the futuristic aspects of life as depicted in the novel (although not in the movies or other adaptions), used as a deliberite and extreme contrast to the backwardness and primitivness of Cold Comfort farm. Things like TV telephones, and air-taxies. Flora is not just introducing these people to the 20th C, she's dragging them into the future! If I remember corectly the novel was actually set in the mid 40's or 50's (Stella Gibbon's idea of the mid 40's), there'd just been a second world war and many young men (Flora's boyfriend included), had served in it and been affected by it. That is definitly a novel and highly interesting aspect of the story, it should be worth a mention. OzoneO 16:21, 14 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Good idea, it was something I was intrigued about when I read it but it was not alluded to at all in the adaptations. I have inserted a paragraph about this! Tony Corsini 10:00, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have removed the reference to aircraft postal services as being futuristic. Letters were carried by aircraft long before 1932. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.122.40.104 (talk) 19:24, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It seems to me that the line Some of the book's attitudes to class and Jews are archaic does not belong in a paragraph about Futurism. Perhaps that line should be elsewhere or even deleted if it contravenes the Wikipedia's NPOV rule. Ant501UK (talk) 23:49, 31 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I was puzzled over the reference to the television in the phone dial, until I came across this wiki page and saw that there are other details that reveal the setting to be in the future. Here's another: Earl Neck talks about famous Hollywood actors, Clark Gable and Gary Cooper, saying of each that his heyday was "twenty years ago." He also mentions an actor who endured a public scandal "back in '42." Now that I think back on it, the futuristic setting is also fostered by mention of Claud Hart-Harris's war experience in the "Anglo-Nicaraguan war," as well. This is mentioned during the scene at the birthday party for Dick Hawke-Monitor.--Mooncaine (talk) 23:26, 19 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Gibbons says in the dedication that the novel is set in the future. It's at the beginning of her book. I believe it's part of her point about fighting backwardness. I've added a couple of science fiction categories to the main page, since the novel is technically -- if subtly -- science fiction. Artemis-Arethusa (talk) 00:31, 5 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Science fiction and futuristic fiction are different genres. I also think that Cold Comfort Farm is neither: neither science, nor the future setting, are relevant to the story.

The idea of Sussex (one of the home counties between London and Brighton) as a remote place of widespread festering rural ignorance cut off from the modern world is almost certainly itself a joke (running against more ordinary expectations of Cumbria or northern Wales etc.), though I don't really know how to best phrase an explanation. AnonMoos (talk) 08:33, 8 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

But remember it was written in the 1930s. before the Yuppification of Sussex: the South Downs and Weald had patches that were pretty isolated. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 10:15, 8 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think the point is that Gibbons is parodying novels which characterize places like Sussex as like that (out of strange ignorance or uncaring), when so far as I know even in the 'thirties they weren't. It's supposed to be ridiculous.Artemis-Arethusa (talk) 00:33, 5 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have lived in Sussex for most of my life, and let me tell you that parts of it are still mired in dark medieval superstition such as "applied kinesiology", "muscle testing", "homeopathy", "Bach flower remedies", "Reiki" etc. etc. Oddly, perhaps, these are to be found more often in the major urban centres such as the "city" of "Brighton 'n' Hove". Hundovir (talk) 20:11, 17 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think the Solutions section needs a proper work over. Some things are inaccurate and others aren't solutions or not purposefully done by Flora at all. She didn't plan for Urk to marry Mariam, that was just a natural byproduct of Elfine's engagement. And She didn't plan on Mr. Mybug marrying Rennet, that was just a byproduct of his character traits and his own pursuit of Flora allowing the chance meeting. It's possible the whole section should be scrapped, doesn't this constitute as spoilers? Anyway, it should have a different heading and preface. It could also be broken up into something like "Flora's Solutions" and "What Happened to Everyone Else," because "Urk: forgets his desire for Elfine and marries Meriam." is not a solution. And Adam going to live at Hautcouture Hall was Adam's idea.

Also, none of the gentry are listened under characters. You'd need Richard Hawk-Monitor, Mrs. Hawk-Monitor and Joan Hawk-Monitor. And poor Claud Hart-Harris isn't listed anywhere. If you're going to list all the cows then you should list a character who speaks and is mentioned more than once when not present (on the telephone and through telegrams). And considering a lot of Flora's efforts go into getting Richard to propose to Elfine, not listing his character is silly.

A better way to list characters is by their natural location (London, Cold Comfort Farm, Howling, Hautcouture Hall, etc.) and within that list, if people cared to, they could be listed by order of appearance. 74.71.120.162 (talk) 13:10, 27 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've just started reading George Eliot's Adam Bede and the first thing that has struck me is that it must have been a strong influence on Cold Comfort Farm (rural setting, modernisation of traditional agricuture, characters called "Adam" and "Seth," Methodist preachers, etc.). I don't have time at the moment to look for published sources, but I'm sure that I'm not the first to notice this connection, so maybe someone would like to add some sourced content about this to this article? Phil Bridger (talk) 21:23, 4 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"Bohemianism" is misspelled in Note 1. 03:59, 24 November 2010 (UTC)