Flora is an attractive 20-year-old London socialite who has inherited very little money after her parents die. She is pragmatic, so she realizes that she will need to provide for herself even though she has no marketable skills. She advocates tidiness as the guiding principle of life, and this principle allows her to make use of her one great talent: her common sense. Her name, Flora, represents her growth mindset, one that contrasts with the melancholy of the past that surrounds on Cold Comfort Farm.

Because Flora abhors all forms of disorder, she feels sure in her decisions to tidy up other people’s lives as well as her own. For this reason, she chooses to live with the Starkadders in the first place. The family proves to be a project to keep Flora busy, and she fulfills her belief that she can sort them out. While her devotion to tidiness as the answer to all of life’s problems might seem naïve and presumptuous, Flora actually succeeds in accomplishing her goals by the end of the novel.