Who is Flora from Friend of My Youth: Stories and what is their importance?

The image the reader gets of Flora Grieves is tainted first by the narrator's mother's bias, then by the narrator's own views. As such, the reader is very far removed from Flora's feelings, and we cannot get a very accurate sense of who she was. Instead, we must assess her from the story that others tell about her.

Flora is a very conservative, puritanical woman who does not embrace change lightly or easily. She will not accept modern conveniences, because her religion (Cameroonian Christianity) forbids them. She sticks to the values and rules with which she was raised, obeying her father and church without question. Due to this, we might expect her to be a very hard, cold and boring woman, but in actual fact she is a very forgiving and pleasant woman. The narrator's mother finds her to be a true friend, and is devoted to her. She sings her praises, and is outraged with the way life and other people treat her. In the narrator's mother's story, Flora comes across as a saint who struggles on through a number of hardships, who never casts anyone out of her house despite two deep betrayals.