Matilda

Struck by Matilda’s genius, Miss Honey decides the school should advance her out of first grade. She goes to Miss Trunchbull’s office. The headmistress has small, arrogant eyes, a cruel mouth, and jutting chin above a belted brown smock and green breeches that cover a bulky athletic body. Unlike most headmistresses, she isn’t fair-minded or much concerned about children’s educational welfare.

When Miss Honey mentions Matilda, Trunchbull barks that she admires the child’s father, who recently sold her a low-mileage car and who warned her about Matilda, who no doubt is a “[n]asty little worm” (85) whom Trunchbull will have to squash like a bug. Already, she’s convinced that it was Matilda who stink-bombed her office that morning.

Miss Honey thinks Trunchbull is being ridiculous. When Trunchbull listens to Miss Honey’s account of Matilda doing times tables and reading advanced books, Trunchbull snorts that she can do the same. To Miss Honey’s insistence that Matilda be placed in classes with 11-year-olds, Trunchbull accuses her of trying to pawn off the little girl onto another instructor so that Matilda can cause trouble elsewhere.

Miss Honey gives up and returns to her class, determined to do what she can to help Matilda. 

From several teachers, Miss Honey collects advanced textbooks in math, language, and English literature. Back in class, she tells Matilda that she’ll be working on these books while the rest of the class works on more elementary material. Matilda thanks her and starts in. Miss Honey admires Matilda’s quiet, gentle, and humble personality.

She decides to visit Matilda’s parents that evening to discuss the girl’s advanced learning. She hopes they’ll give her permission to tutor Matilda after school. She goes to their house, and they let her in, but they’d rather watch TV than discuss their daughter. The teacher quickly learns that they didn’t teach Matilda anything; they know she reads books, but they consider it a useless habit, especially for a girl.

Mrs. Wormwood declares that she herself focuses on her looks and is much more attractive than Miss Honey, who merely focuses on learning. The teacher tries to bring up Matilda’s math prowess, but Mr. Wormwood says calculators work just fine. Mrs. Wormwood adds, “A girl doesn’t get a man by being brainy” (99).

Miss Honey suggests that, with tutoring, Matilda can reach university level within three years, but Mr. Wormwood says universities are useless and merely teach “bad habits.” Miss Honey has heard about parents like this, but meeting them is a shock. She gives up and departs. 

Aside from her amazing mental abilities, Matilda is just a normal little girl. She makes friends easily; they don’t much care that she’s the teacher’s pet. She makes friends with Lavender, a small, skinny girl who is bold like Matilda.

Standing together on the playground during a morning break, the two girls are approached by 10-year-old Hortensia, who tells them—between huge mouthfuls of potato chips—that “the Trunchbull” thinks first-year kids are “grubs,” and she makes their lives miserable. Some “get carried out on stretchers screaming. I’ve seen it often” (102).

The two girls don’t react, so Hortensia tells them about Trunchbull’s punishment cabinet, The Chokey, a narrow enclosure where “bad” students are locked up and must stand for hours, lest they lean against the walls and get stabbed by nails and broken glass.

Lavender asks if Hortensia has been in The Chokey, and she says yes, six times in her first year alone, the first time for putting syrup on Trunchbull’s chair seat. Hortensia later sprinkled itching powder into the underwear in Trunchbull’s extra-clothing drawer, and two days later during prayers the headmistress started scratching her rear and had to get up and hurry out. Trunchbull couldn’t prove who did it, but she’s a good guesser, and Hortensia got another day standing in The Chokey.

Lavender and Matilda feel deep admiration: Hortensia is as brave as a warrior and someone “who had brought the art of skulduggery to the highest point of perfection” (108). They realize that dealing with Trunchbull will be like waging war.

Hortensia tells them how one boy got caught eating candy in class, and Trunchbull picked him up and threw him out the window. Trunchbull did the hammer throw in the Olympics, and she’s very strong.

At that moment, the playground grows silent as Trunchbull marches through groups of kids who part for her like the Red Sea. She calls out for Amanda Thripp, a little girl with lovely pigtails. Trunchbull hates pigtails and orders the terrified girl to have them chopped off at home. Amanda stammers that her mother likes them; Trunchbull retorts that Amanda’s mother is a twit.

She reaches down, grabs the girl by the pigtails, spins her around and around like an Olympic hammer, and lets go. Amanda sails over the fence; she lands, bouncing, on the grass of a playing field. Dazed, she sits up, climbs to her feet, and totters back to the playground.

Trunchbull says, “Not bad,” and stalks off. 

Matilda tells Lavender that Trunchbull gets away with her terrible cruelties because they’re so outrageous that no adult will believe a child who reports them. She says Amanda’s mother will refuse to cut off Amanda’s pigtails, so the girl will do it herself. Matilda then remarks that their school “is like being in a cage with a cobra. You have to be very fast on your feet” (118).

The next day, Trunchbull calls an assembly. The students file in, but no teachers accompany them. Trunchbull calls to the stage Bruce Bogtrotter, a chubby 11-year-old. She calls him a “poisonous pustule” and a thief who stole her lunchtime dessert cake. She forces Bruce to thank the chef for the delicious treat, then she has the chef lug out a gigantic chocolate cake that Trunchbull forces Bruce to eat, one slice at a time. He protests, but she yells at him to continue.

The kids think he’ll get halfway through and become sick, but, aside from one large belch, Bruce gets into the swing of it, and somehow he manages to eat the entire cake. The audience erupts into cheers. Trunchbull, enraged, picks up the empty china cake plate and brings it crashing down onto Bruce’s head. The plate shatters, but Bruce is too dazed already to feel it. He keeps smiling. Trunchbull curses and stomps offstage. 

Miss Honey announces that Trunchbull will teach the class on Thursday (the headmistress has made it a custom to teach a class for one period each week). She warns the students to show up neat and tidy, speak only when spoken to, and to know their times tables and spelling lessons. Miss Honey also asks for someone to make sure there’s a glass and a water jug on the front table. Lavender volunteers.

Lavender admires Hortensia’s exploits and has heard about Matilda’s practical jokes at home; she, too, wants to do something heroic. The jug and glass are an opportunity, and she gets an idea. That night, from the muddy pond in her family garden, Lavender scoops up a newt—a small amphibious creature—and crams it into her pencil box. She brings it to school the next day and slips it into Trunchbull’s classroom water jug. 

Promptly at two o’clock, Trunchbull arrives at the class. She greets the children, then derides them, snorting that they’re “garbage” and that she’ll have to expel as many of them as she can to maintain her peace of mind. The kids carefully say nothing. She inspects every student for cleanliness and finds one, Nigel, whose hands are dirty. She makes him stand in the corner on one leg and recite some spelling. He succeeds, then says that Miss Honey taught everyone yesterday how to spell a hard word, “difficulty.” Trunchbull chooses at random a girl and demands that she spell the word. She does so.

Trunchbull supposes that the teacher wasted an entire lesson teaching them how to spell the one word, but Nigel explains that Miss Honey makes up a poetic song with the letters included, and they all sing it together, and that helps them remember the spelling. Trunchbull orders Miss Honey to stop teaching poetry with spelling. She then calls on another kid, Rupert, to multiply two by seven. He gets the answer wrong; she lifts him up by his hair and forces him to say that two sevens are 14. He does, she lets go of him, and he drops several feet and bounces off the floor.

The children are hypnotized by all this. It’s wonderfully entertaining.

Trunchbull asks another boy, Eric, to spell “what,” and there’s a moment of confusion when the boy thinks she wants him to tell her what he wants to spell. Finally he understands and spells “what” but muffs it. She tells him he’s wrong, that he sits wrong, looks wrong, and is wrong in every respect. She orders him to try again; he decides it must be spelled W-H-O-T-T. Trunchbull grabs him by the ears and lifts him screaming out of his seat. Miss Honey begs her to set him down, but Trunchbull insists the boy’s ears can’t fall off. She tells Eric how to spell the word and Eric quickly recites it back. Trunchbull sets him back down in his seat.

She tells Miss Honey that the way to teach is to “hammer” it into their heads and to beat them like headmaster Wackford Squeers in Dickens’s Nicholas Nickleby—which, she believes, this group of “morons” will never read.

Matilda says that she’s read it. Trunchbull calls her a liar, then asks her name. Matilda tells her, and Trunchbull says Matilda’s father recently sold her a car whose engine fell out and was full of sawdust. Matilda admits he’s clever at business; Trunchbull shouts that she hates clever people, that she’s heard Mr. Wormwood’s nasty stories about Matilda, and that the girl had better not try such things at school. 

Trunchbull sits at the teacher’s desk and loudly wishes that all school children, who to her are like insects, be eradicated with insect spray. Miss Honey says her attempt at humor isn’t funny. Trunchbull replies that she’s serious and that the perfect school would have no children.

The headmistress pours water from the jug into her glass. Along with the water, the slimy newt plops into the glass. Trunchbull jumps up with a yell. The students become agitated as they watch the creature wriggle about. Lavender suggests Trunchbull take care against possible newt bites. In a rage, Trunchbull accuses Matilda of committing the crime. Matilda denies it; Lavender is struck by guilt that her friend is in trouble.

Trunchbull rages that Matilda will be drummed out of school and sent to a reformatory for 40 years. Matilda, who doesn’t mind being caught actually doing something mischievous, deeply resents being falsely accused. She shouts that she didn’t do it. Trunchbull orders her to sit or be whipped. Matilda sits, furious at the unfairness.

A strange, electric feeling grows inside her eyes, like lightning building up. Her eyes fix at the glass as she whispers, “Tip it over!” (166). The glass teeters and then topples; water and newt are flung onto Trunchbull’s chest. The headmistress screams and leaps from her seat. The newt clings to her chest; she swipes at it, and it flies across the room and lands on the floor at Lavender’s feet. Lavender grabs it and puts it in her pencil box: “A newt, she decided, was a useful thing to have around” (166).

Trunchbull shouts that Matilda must have done it. Matilda feels strangely serene and confident. She feels like she can do anything now. She says calmly that she hasn’t moved from her desk. Other kids shout out their agreement. Some accuse Trunchbull of spilling the glass. Trunchbull asks Miss Honey who did it; she replies that none of the class—save for Nigel, who’s still standing in the corner—has moved all session.

In a rage, Trunchbull storms out and slams the door behind her. Miss Honey dismisses the class to the playground.