Matilda

I read Matilda for the first time two decades ago. I had not revisited it since, but decided to do so a few days ago after seeing it pleadingly ensconced on a shelf in a local library. Unlike my past self, who, as a child, had little to contest in this simple narrative, I was displeased with how brazenly overdone it felt. It read like a hammy and blatant self-insert meant to vindicate those whose premature intellect was not commended to their satisfaction. I found that, beneath the thin veneer of girl empowerment and principled mischief, there was little thematic impact, owing to Dahl's inability to convey even a hint of nuance in the morality of his tale. With nauseatingly virtuous heroes and restlessly foul villains, any pretense to show more didacticism is lost in its own hyperbole. Sadly, Dahl's works for children are conveniently installed in a genre that is ever underestimated, and therefore, they are acclaimed as masterpieces. Indeed, this genre is one to which many writers turn to avoid the criticism they would undoubtedly face for their patent inelegance, and in which such inelegance is otherwise welcomed by many adults who tritely excuse it as "immaterial" considering the target audience; truly, a most lamentable complacency. While Dahl's style is of unmistakable aesthetic value, which finds better use elsewhere in his oeuvre, it is simply not enough to elevate the book above its arrant lack of grace. show less

This is another children’s classic that I somehow missed reading in my childhood. Some aspects of the story are rather unsettling this far removed from the era in which it was written. I can’t imagine a 3-year-old child left home alone in our 21st century world, or another adult learning of that circumstance and not reporting it to child protective services.

Another thing that puzzles me is how Matilda learned to read and do arithmetic without being read aloud to or coached. I was fascinated by this part of Matilda’s story, since I was reading by age four. I wasn’t aware of learning to read, and I don’t know how I learned, but I imagine that being read to a lot had quite a bit to do with it. Matilda was largely ignored by the show more rest of the family, and none of them were readers anyway. So how did Matilda learn?

Stories that portray children with agency to right wrongs and change their circumstances for the better have a timeless appeal. It’s satisfying to see Matilda get the best of Miss Trunchbull, escape her neglectful family, and find a new home with her teacher and mentor, Miss Honey. The audio version read by Kate Winslet is delightful, and well worth seeking out. show less

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Title: Matilda
Series: ----------
Authors: Roald Dahl
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Childrens Fiction
Pages: 120
Words: 40K

Synopsis:

From Wikipedia.org

In a small Buckinghamshire village forty minutes by bus away from Reading and 8 miles from the Bingo club in Aylesbury, Matilda Wormwood is born to Mr and Mrs Wormwood. She immediately shows amazing precocity, learning to speak at age one and to read at age three and a half, perusing all the children's books show more in the library by the age of four and three months and moving on to longer classics such as Great Expectations and Jane Eyre. However, her parents (particularly her father) ignore and emotionally abuse her and completely refuse to acknowledge her abilities, and Matilda finds herself forced to pull pranks on them (such as gluing her father's hat to his head, sticking a parrot in the chimney to simulate a burglar or ghost, and bleaching her father's hair) to avoid getting frustrated.

At the age of five and a half, Matilda enters school and befriends her teacher Jennifer Honey, who is astonished by her intellectual abilities. Miss Honey tries to move Matilda into a higher class, but the tyrannical headmistress, Miss Agatha Trunchbull, refuses. Miss Honey also tries to talk to Mr and Mrs Wormwood about their daughter's intelligence, but they ignore her, with the mother contending "brainy-ness" is an undesirable trait in a little girl.

Miss Trunchbull later confronts a girl called Amanda Thripp for wearing pigtails (the headmistress repeatedly displays a dislike of long hair throughout the book) and does a hammer throw with the girl over the playground fence. A boy called Bruce Bogtrotter is later caught by the cook stealing a piece of Miss Trunchbull's cake; the headmistress makes him attempt to eat an 18 in (45.72 cm) wide cake in front of the assembly, then smashes the platter over his head in rage after he unexpectedly succeeds.

Matilda quickly develops a particularly strong bond with Miss Honey, and watches as Trunchbull terrorises her students with deliberately creative, over-the-top punishments to prevent parents from believing them, such as throwing them in a dark closet dubbed "The Chokey", which is lined with nails and broken glass. When Matilda's friend Lavender plays a practical joke on Trunchbull by placing a newt in her jug of water, Matilda uses an unexpected power of telekinesis to tip the glass of water containing the newt onto Trunchbull.

Matilda reveals her new powers to Miss Honey, who confides that after her wealthy father, Dr Magnus Honey, suspiciously died, she was raised by an abusive aunt, revealed to be Miss Trunchbull. Trunchbull appears (among other misdeeds) to be withholding her niece's inheritance, as Miss Honey has to live in poverty in a derelict farm cottage, and her salary is being paid into Miss Trunchbull's bank account for the first 10 years of her teaching career (while she is restricted to £1 per week in pocket money). Preparing to avenge Miss Honey, Matilda practises her telekinesis at home. Later, during a sadistic lesson that Miss Trunchbull is teaching, Matilda telekinetically raises a piece of chalk to the blackboard and begins to use it to write, posing as the spirit of "Magnus". Addressing Miss Trunchbull using her first name, "Magnus" demands that Miss Trunchbull hand over Miss Honey's house and wages and leave the school, causing Miss Trunchbull to faint.

The next day, the school's deputy headmaster, Mr Trilby, visits Trunchbull's house and finds it empty, except for signs of Trunchbull's hasty exit. She is never seen again, and the house and property are finally and rightfully returned to Miss Honey. Trilby becomes the new headmaster, proving himself to be capable and good-natured, overwhelmingly improving the school's atmosphere and curriculum, and quickly moving Matilda into the top-form class with the 11-year-olds. Rather to Matilda's relief, she soon is no longer capable of telekinesis. Miss Honey theorises this is because Matilda is using her brainpower on a more challenging curriculum, leaving less of her brain's energy free, unlike earlier when she was not in a high year, where she had her brainpower free for psychokinesis.

Matilda continues to visit Miss Honey at her house regularly, returning home one day to find her parents and her older brother Michael hastily packing to leave for Spain. Miss Honey explains this is because the police found out Mr Wormwood has been selling stolen cars. Matilda asks permission to live with Miss Honey, to which her parents rather distractedly agree. Matilda and Miss Honey find their happy ending, as the Wormwoods drive away, never to be seen again.

My Thoughts:

I chose this book to start my Roald Dahl re-read because it is the best selling book of his (at least according to wikipedia). Honestly, I just needed something to choose which book to go with.

Really, the exact same thing struck me this time around as it did back in '12. Dahl was able to tap into what it feels like to be a child and then tell a story about a childs most basic wish fulfillment, ie, to be in control and to have a stable and loving environment.

What I like about Dahl is that even while describing horrible circumstances, he doesn't make that the focus and so neither the main character nor the reader are stuck there. He uses a combination of humor and fictional empowerment to get the child into a place where things are better. He also tends to make the villains buffoons and idiots even if they are very powerful.

This was a delightful (a word I suspect I will be using for most of his books) little day read that allowed me to become an all powerful child for a short time and to forget the grind of life.

★★★★☆ show less

Oooh, yikes. I think I watched the movie version of Matilda a couple months ago and still enjoyed it thoroughly, but reading the book opened my eyes to a lot of troublesome things, and I have to say I didn't enjoy it at all.

Book content warnings:
lesbophobia (specifically anti-butch)
sexism & misogyny
fatphobic
child abuse mention
suicide mention

Ugh. I'm so disappointed. It's one of those things you loved when you were little, only to discover it's incredibly problematic and lackluster when you grew up.

For one, the tone is so fatphobic it's sometimes hard for me to read the book without contempt. Many of the book's characters the audience are supposed to like are continuously described as "small", "thin", "tiny", etc., while the villains show more are fat and large and bulging. Fat people are described with such disgust that I'm just revolted by the author. I know this wasn't written recently, but it's just hard to read.

Not only that, but this author seems to project his own anti-feminist, anti-butch lesbian views onto this children's book. Miss Trunchbull is literally the personification of the radical feminist of his time: ugly, manly, large and bulky. She acts like a man, too, participates in what could be seen as stereotypical men's sports, has no need for marriage - in fact, she looks down on it when one of the children sings back Miss Honey's rhyme "Mrs. D Mrs. I Mrs. F F I, etc." and Miss. Trunchbull exclaims "Why are all these women married?".

Miss Trunchbull also hates anything feminine (aka the little girl /growing out/ her pigtails), and hates children. She also literally killed the patriarch of her family so she could be in charge. Reading this as a butch lesbian myself just made me roll my eyes every other page.

The plot started slowly, and then rushed faster and faster until the end just ... happened, and I was left feeling like the book ended without actually finishing, if that makes sense. There was no feeling of an actual conclusion.

And the relationship between Miss Honey and Matilda made me incredibly uncomfortable. The prose even mentions Matilda as a grown-up child rather than an actual child. And that Matilda and Miss Honey were equals. Which could make their relationship ... really weird. It's basically how Miss Honey "opens up" about her past. But she really just blurts out "my father killed himself" to a six-year-old girl. This all reads so awkwardly and worryingly. It doesn't matter if this kid is the most intelligent girl in the world, of all time! She's still a child.

Anyway, yeah ... I didn't enjoy this. show less

A comfort read that speaks to me on a very deep level. Funny how, unlike many of Dahl's works, Matilda has never been challenged or banned, as it's literally about the power of books and the life of the mind to inspire resistance to authority.

I read Matilda for the first time two decades ago. I had not revisited it since, but decided to do so a few days ago after seeing it pleadingly ensconced on a shelf in a local library. Unlike my past self, who, as a child, had little to contest in this simple narrative, I was displeased with how brazenly overdone it felt. It read like a hammy and blatant self-insert meant to vindicate those whose premature intellect was not commended to their satisfaction. I found that, beneath the thin veneer of girl empowerment and principled mischief, there was little thematic impact, owing to Dahl's inability to convey even a hint of nuance in the morality of his tale. With nauseatingly virtuous heroes and restlessly foul villains, any pretense to show more didacticism is lost in its own hyperbole. Sadly, Dahl's works for children are conveniently installed in a genre that is ever underestimated, and therefore, they are acclaimed as masterpieces. Indeed, this genre is one to which many writers turn to avoid the criticism they would undoubtedly face for their patent inelegance, and in which such inelegance is otherwise welcomed by many adults who tritely excuse it as "immaterial" considering the target audience; truly, a most lamentable complacency. While Dahl's style is of unmistakable aesthetic value, which finds better use elsewhere in his oeuvre, it is simply not enough to elevate the book above its arrant lack of grace. show less

A beloved children's classic, Matilda will resonate with the booklover in all of us who wanted to read all the books the library had and all those who wished to have magic of their own.

I never read this as a child and while it's undoubtedly aimed at a younger audience, there's plenty here for older readers to enjoy. There's a pretty extensive list of classic literature to explore

Every Book Reference in Matilda

Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Gone to Earth by Mary Webb
Kim by Rudyard Kipling
The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
The Sound and the Fury show more by William Faulkner
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Good Companions by J. B. Priestley
Brighton Rock by Graham Greene
Animal Farm by George Orwell
Easy Cooking
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Red Pony by John Steinbeck
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling
In Country Sleep by Poet Dylan Thomas
Grimm's Fairy Tales
Hans Christian Anderson Fairy Tales

Dahl, Roald. Matilda. Penguin Young Readers Group. Kindle Edition.

, some great thoughts about the joys of books

“Mr Hemingway says a lot of things I don’t understand,” Matilda said to her. “Especially about men and women. But I loved it all the same. The way he tells it I feel I am right there on the spot watching it all happen.” “A fine writer will always make you feel that,” Mrs Phelps said. “And don’t worry about the bits you can’t understand. Sit back and allow the words to wash around you, like music.”

Dahl, Roald. Matilda (pp. 18-19). Penguin Young Readers Group. Kindle Edition.

and some truly wonderful ideas about revenge

Most children in Matilda’s place would have burst into floods of tears. She didn’t do this. She sat there very still and white and thoughtful. She seemed to know that neither crying nor sulking ever got anyone anywhere. The only sensible thing to do when you are attacked is, as Napoleon once said, to counter-attack. Matilda’s wonderfully subtle mind was already at work devising yet another suitable punishment for the poisonous parent.

Dahl, Roald. Matilda (p. 41). Penguin Young Readers Group. Kindle Edition.

, sales

“Say that again,” the son said. “How much did it sell for?” “Nine hundred and ninety-nine pounds and fifty pence,” the father said. “And that, by the way, is another of my nifty little tricks to diddle the customer. Never ask for a big round figure. Always go just below it. Never say one thousand pounds. Always say nine hundred and ninety-nine fifty. It sounds much less but it isn’t. Clever, isn’t it?”

Dahl, Roald. Matilda (p. 52). Penguin Young Readers Group. Kindle Edition.

and getting away with lying

“How can she get away with it?” Lavender said to Matilda. “Surely the children go home and tell their mothers and fathers. I know my father would raise a terrific stink if I told him the Headmistress had grabbed me by the hair and slung me over the playground fence.” “No, he wouldn’t,” Matilda said, “and I’ll tell you why. He simply wouldn’t believe you.” “Of course he would.” “He wouldn’t,” Matilda said. “And the reason is obvious. Your story would sound too ridiculous to be believed. And that is the Trunchbull’s great secret.” “What is?” Lavender asked. Matilda said, “Never do anything by halves if you want to get away with it. Be outrageous. Go the whole hog. Make sure everything you do is so completely crazy it’s unbelievable. No parent is going to believe this pigtail story, not in a million years. Mine wouldn’t. They’d call me a liar.”

Dahl, Roald. Matilda (p. 117). Penguin Young Readers Group. Kindle Edition.

.

The plot moves at a fast clip, pausing just long enough to impart some decent wisdom at various points. I loved the librarian Mrs Phelps who helps Matilda to find her reading material and encourages her to sign up for a library card. I loved Lavender and her fierce desire for action - the lizard was hilarious. I loved Matilda's deep desire to learn and understand and achieve her goals. Although funnily enough I was somewhat indifferent to Matilda herself. I loved what she represented rather than who she was. And I mainly felt sorry for Miss Honey and her inability to break free from her abuser.

I didn't love Matilda's family either but here the movie helped because I could only ever picture Danny DeVito while reading and I was left torn between my hate for the book version versus the hilarity of DeVito's acting.

I liked Matilda's revenge on Miss Trunchbull although I would've liked to see more of the aftermath, maybe allow Miss Honey or Matilda to gloat a little. As for the ending, the storyline for Matilda's family was way too abrupt and felt choppy and unfinished. But then, that seems to be Dahl's style as many of his books are finished suddenly.

Overall a fun and timeless classic and a must read for all bookworms. 4 stars for the target audience, 3 stars for me. show less