Character Analysis
Florabel is Idabel's twin sister, but the similarity stops there. In fact, the girls are polar opposites. Florabel tells Joel, "We were born twins, like I told you, but Mama says the Lord always sends something bad with the good" (1.1.131). The bad would be Idabel and the good, Florabel, in this case.
Where Idabel wears pants and acts rough, Florabel dresses up and combs her hair. But while she acts as though she's the sweet one, Florabel lives to torture her sister:
"I don't see why you want to take on about that nasty hound thisaway," she said, looping a curl in her strawberry hair, blinking her eyes innocently. "Mama's going to make Papa shoot him anyway cause he's liable to give us all some mortal disease." (1.5.61)
Her innocence hides a mean, violent streak.
Florabel shows us that the "normal" people can be just as cruel and unusual as the crazies that populate the novel. She does everything she can to fit in and act like a girl should, but that doesn't mean that she's a better person. In fact, she's pretty awful, and Joel ends up much closer to Idabel than to Florabel.