What does its future setting add to Cold Comfort Farm?

Question

Cold Comfort Farm is set gently but irresistibly a decade or two after its original publishing date, with video phones and the Anglo-Nicaraguan War of '46 and so forth.However, setting the action in the future doesn't impact the plot or characters in any particular way, and although Gibbons places many movements and genres in her satirical sights I don't get the impression futurism or speculative fiction are among them. It seems like a peculiar choice for a novel most famous as a satire of the "loam and lovechild" genre.What does setting *Cold Comfort Farm* in the future add to the novel?

Answer 1

This is a very good question and I am happy to answer...hopefully my response helps more than confuses or hurts.

Authors with great talent, insight or depth may use such tactics for any number of reasons. Remember: writing is an art form and the purpose of any art is to make us feel things but also to get us thinking or meditating upon things more deeply, more carefully.

With this in mind, let us first bring out and put aside for the moment one possibility: that the artist/writer is simply messing with our heads. This is always a possibility and one that many miss or simply do not want to admit. So let us assume that Gibbons is not, in truth, just messing with our heads and move on to sounder ground.

Perhaps the author wants us to consider how the devices, trends and forces of our particular time affect us? Perhaps Ms. Gibbons feels that females are cast into roles that ultimately let the female in question down somehow? Perhaps the author is comparing and contrasting specific eras to get us to gauge whether or not females are treated any better or worse than they have been in times past?

My own intuition says that the latter is the most likely response: Stella Gibbons wants more and more people to seriously think upon and take seriously the life and times and plight of females in society.

This is my intuition but after all these words I have shared, I only urge you to very simply, with a focus and a care that is undivided or targeted, sit with your own feelings and thoughts as they are evoked and affected by Gibbons' work.

If you make an effort to sit with and really think about and feel about her story and all of its implications, you will come to a feeling and understanding that will probably be spot on but, more importantly, you will have achieved your very own understanding based solely upon your very own efforts and caring.

I wish you the very best and hope or urge you or anyone you wish to reach out to me or "use me," for lack of better diction as your learning needs require.

Jeff

lover of all things literacy related and helping others love, build and cultivate their very own passion for such!

https://www.wyzant.com/Tutors/Jeffrey2112