Cold Comfort Farm

“Mrs. Smiling’s character was firm and her tastes civilized. Her system of dealing with human nature when it insisted on obtruding its grossness upon her scheme of life was short and effective; she pretended things were not so: and usually, after a time, they were not.”

Flora’s friend takes exactly the opposite approach to Flora when dealing with unpleasantness. She goes into denial while Flora accepts the absurdity in progress and sets about changing it. Without this acceptance, Flora would never have been able to cope with the Starkadders in the first place.

“On the whole I thought I liked having everything very tidy and calm all round me, and not being bothered to do things, and laughing at the kind of joke other people didn’t think at all funny.”

In this passage, Flora is telling her gym instructor why she doesn’t care for sports. She is also articulating her dominant philosophy of life. She will apply the same preference for tidiness and calm in all her dealings with her overwrought relatives.

“Whereas there still lingers some absurd prejudice against living on one’s friends, no limits are set, either by society or by one’s own conscience, to the amount one may impose upon one’s relatives.”

This passage reveals Flora’s pragmatism in her assessment of how to survive. She herself might not have any difficulty living off her friends since she cares little about respectability. However, the untidiness of the Starkadders offers her an irresistible challenge.