The Critique of the Generic Reason. (Rules of the Genre - Rules of Life)

Our paper tries to show that, in well-timed cultural contexts, Genre, one of the strongest codes of literature, imposes oppressive patterns of behavior on real life. This is particularly the case for what is regarded as popular genres such as medieval romances, melodramas and, as we seek to show, also for the so called rural British novel. Literary historians often point out that, during the nineteenth century, this literary genre had a shaping impact on British every-day life, locking up places, cities and even people in literary pattern catchalls. The starting point for our analysis is Stella Gibbons' famous Cold Comfort Farm. Its main character, Flora Poste, is simultaneously a representative of the author and an epitome of the contemporary reader community's Higher common sense, as the author puts it. Despite her apprehensions, she travels from London to live with relatives on a Sussex farm which, on close inspection, turns out to be an appalling fortress of compelling generic codes and literary behavior patterns. After a robust campaign of normalization, Gibbon's character prevails over a particular type of narrative universe where real people have been cast in scary literary roles by convenient cultural circumstances. Seen by its contemporaries in the first instance as a wicked parody, Cold Comfort Farm is in fact a staged interpretative process. Gibbons cunningly builds a sophisticated storytelling process through which an outsider gradually pushes open the doors of the daunting literary dungeon, sets free a full cast of frightened people and allows them to take the path of a normal day to day existence.