Notes on Cold Comfort Farm through the lens of Type Two Themes
Please note: This novel is delightfully witty, and is what is recommended for this course as a refreshing antidote to the times. The film is just as sweet but at last look is unavailable for streaming-- well worth the $6 you may pay for a DVD. Email me if you need a copy I have one at home but you'll need to pass to another student soon thereafter if so.
Notes on Film/Novel (Cold Comfort Farm) & Type 2 (The Connector)
*Read these notes at your own timing. I'm not responsible Spoiler Alerts! below! ;-) And in a true confession, I was raised by an extroverted Social Two with many of the characteristics of the main character. Have a gloriously wonderful time. --- Dale Rhodes
A proud and unworldly young girl Flora Poste has lost her family, but we are introduced to her as someone who would like to use her relatives' offerings of hospitality as fodder for a novel in 30 years. She laughs with her cousin at who is not interesting enough to host her. Two themes are: PRIDEFULNESS. HOSPITALITY. MANIPULATION. JUDGEMENT (1 Wing) at SOCIAL STATUS (3 Wing).
She visits a cousin/friend who has hired help, a butler. She is a girl supposedly in need of help, but proud about who she will connect with to ask for help. She will take the rich cousin and then the poorest who need help.
"What will you live on?" My relatives! Self-Pres Twos get people to do things for them; Sexual Twos do things for their beloveds; Social Twos use others to get help done. It’s all over this book/film……..
Flora says she likes to clean up messes (1 wing) but she also likes to be seen (3 wing) as the one to do so.
When Adam comes to pick her up and tells her about the "doom of the Stark-Adder's"... Flora says "I'm sure it's not as bad as all that." POSITIVE OUTLOOK TYPES 2-7-9 That is where we are in this part of the class.
The DOOM present in the book (farm, family, Judith, Aunt Ada Doom) provides dramatic/comedic tension from Type Two’s Connection to Type Four (Retracted/Envy) and in the Enneagram of Harmony Type Five (Retracted/Stinge)
Flora is a Two filled with suggestions on acting (3) with improvement (1): selling the farm, Elphine trying the color blue, bringing food to the old hidden aunt, how Adam washes the dishes, family planning, washing curtains, cleaning silver, introducing the custom of afternoon tea, that the old aunt Ada Doom should travel, that Reuben should run the farm, that Seth should be in the movies, that Rennet could be beautiful,
She FLATTERS Amos and tells him what a great preacher he is. FLATTERY is another way to describe a VICE of a TWO: Cause Pridefulness in another and then you can manipulate :-)
The old aunt thinks that Flora wants the farm; Seth thinks Flora wants the farm.. all part of a Two theme that people give to get and that people are manipulators.
Flora sees the potential in everyone--- this is a positive TWO TRAIT
"Everything depends on me" and "I saw something nasty in the woodshed." Flora sees the control that Aunt Ada Doom has over everyone's lives: manipulation. The SELF PRESERVATION TWO *ADA* strategy is to be helpless and needy to get others to do something for you. The SOCIAL TWO *FLORA* gets others to do things for others…. The sweet SEXUAL TWO theme in the book is that when it’s all done, Flora will get her One on One rescue with Charles.
Flora takes Elphine to London as her project to help improve. A bit of Pygmalion.
She counsels the maid Miriam on birth control and in the novel is referred to as Miss Interference, but she's agreed with by the mother Mrs.Beetle.
Mr. Neck, what do you do? "Imagine, the night sky. What do you see? ... Stars. I take ordinary people and turn them into asteroids. I make people stars." Cousin Mary says "Flora does the same."
Flora gets Mary and Charles involved in her helping schemes. She tells Charles at the party: "Think of all the good I do" ... lists it... and says "and you're having a lovely time with me."
As everyone leaves, ADA says "I'm all alone. All alone in the woodshed... they are all gone, and I saw something nasty in the woodshed." Manipulation.
Throughout the movie, Flora tries a Fourish Style of writing but it is a flop, a joke. The other Four energy is her dark cousin who leaves with the psychiatrist to the nursing home because she understands her energy turns inward and he can help her turn it outward.
End of movie: Charles says : “You know, I never did approve of you interfering in other people's lives...you can share mine." She says "Charles, I love you."
BOOK: AUNT ADA DOOM'S power over folks seems like Two Histrionics... I'll go crazy if you leave me, you don't understand my feelings and what I am doing for you and you need me....
WINGS: Flora has Type One "standards" that are obvious in her improvement and reforming of Elfine; and she has Type Three "attention to success and social status" because everything is a conquest that she is sure she will win-- the text even says she doesn't like other people winning.
Self-preservation Twos get people to do things for them (fem fatale, dependent upon the kindness of strangers).
Sexual Twos decide who they are going to become indispensible to and then seduce them.
Social Twos get or use others to help others.
Connections to Types 8 and 4: Two goes to Four in Flora's romanticizing the love of Elphine and Richard. It is also 8 Vengeance against Ada Doom. Ada sees it that way. And sometimes Vengeance is a way of correcting systems: Twos and Eights would know that…but it’s their own view of what is just that gets enacted.
I just LOVE the Two theme that people are capable of more than most can see, and TWOS are human resource folks who can bring out the best in people!!!
Pertaining to Cold Comfort Farm (film/novel)
- How did you feel about Flora’s Way of Being?
- Have you known folks like her?
- How would you describe her type and instinctual style to someone who does not know the enneagram?
Pertaining to Type 2:
- How do you avoid need?
- How might you use flattery or manipulation? persuasion?
- How is it to be on the receiving end of these?
- How have you experienced free giving and receiving?
- How do you experience pridefulness or a "puffed-up"-ness?
- How do you experience humility?
- Have you ever seen something nasty in a woodshed? Smelled a Sukebind?
- Have you ever tried to control parts of you life based on an old story?
| wagner_type_two.pdf |