Matilda is a children’s novel written by Roald Dahl. Released in 1988, it tells of an extremely intelligent young girl taking revenge on a cruel teacher.
Characters[]
- Matilda Wormwood — the highly intelligent, four year old protagonist of the story
- Mr. and Mrs. Wormwood — Matilda and Michael's parents
- Miss Honey — Matilda’s teacher
- Miss Trunchbull — Matilda’s principal
- Michael — Matilda's brother Bruce Bogtrotter — a boy at Matilda's school who is notably forced by Trunchbull to eat a massive cake as a punishment
- Amanda Thripp — a girl at Matilda's school who is notably thrown through the air by Trunchbull by her pigtails
Publisher’s Summary[]
“The Trunchbull” is no match for Matilda!
Matilda is a little girl who is far too good to be true. At age five-and-a-half she's knocking off double-digit multiplication problems and blitz-reading Dickens. Even more remarkably, her classmates love her even though she's a super-nerd and the teacher's pet. But everything is not perfect in Matilda's world...
For starters she has two of the most idiotic, self-centered parents who ever lived. Then there's the large, busty nightmare of a school principal, Miss ("The") Trunchbull, a former hammer-throwing champion who flings children at will, and is approximately as sympathetic as a bulldozer.
Fortunately for Matilda, she has the inner resources to deal with such annoyances: astonishing intelligence, saintly patience, and an innate predilection for revenge.
Full Summary[]
The Wormwoods are bad parents of their two children, Michael and Matilda. The latter of these is brilliant, but her parents, not noticing her potential, tell her to stop reading and watch television instead. She goes to the library daily while dumped at home. The four year old girl is soon reading classics such as Great Expectations for hours in the afternoon in her room.
One day, Mr Wormwood describes a few of his tricks to sell people bad second hand cars to his son. As Matilda tells him that his work is unethical, he gets mad, prompting her to take revenge on him. The next morning, just before her father leaves for work, the girl puts super glue on the brim of his hat. In the evening, Mr Wormwood is still unable to remove the headwear, and his wife cuts it off. However, little pieces of hat remain glued to his hair, giving him a laughable appearance.
About a week after the super glue incident, Mr Wormwood is watching television. Seeing that Matilda is reading instead of paying attention to the programme angers the man, and he starts destroying her library book in a fit of rage. She comes up with a plan to get revenge, a vital ingredient of which is her friend’s talking parrot that she borrows for the day. She hides the bird in the living room. During dinner, the family, except Matilda, who plays along, is scared by the parrot talking, mistaking it for a burglar. Carrying household objects as weapons, the terrified group flees.
One evening, Mr Wormwood tells his son, Michael, to calculate the profit he made off of selling cars that day. He provides him with several figures to do the maths, which Matilda overhears and uses to get the correct answer. When she shares it with her father in a remarkably short time span, he accuses her of cheating. Plotting revenge, Matilda takes her mother’s strong platinum blonde hair dye and mixes a large amount of it into her father’s hair tonic. In the morning, after using his product, Mr Wormwood finds his once black hair he had been proud of to be a horrible dirty silver. He is told that he probably accidentally used his wife’s dye, which, even when very diluted, causes hair to fall out due to the chemicals it contains. Panicking, the father rushes to wash it and has an appointment at the hairdresser’s scheduled to dye it back.
On Matilda’s first day of school, her extraordinary intelligence soon becomes apparent to her young and kind teacher, Miss Honey. The lady informs the headmistress, Miss Trunchbull, of the girl’s gift in an attempt to get her moved up a few grades. However, the other woman finds this idea ridiculous and talks Matilda’s talents down. Miss Honey decides to give her special student textbooks for older children to study during her lessons and have a talk with Mr and Mrs Wormwood regarding their daughter’s brilliance. But also the parents disregard this and behave rudely.
Miss Honey informs her students that Miss Trunchbull teaches each class for one lesson every week, and always wishes to have a jug of water and glass present, which Lavender, Matilda’s friend, volunteers to take care of. She schemes a way to prank her headmistress — put a newt in the opaque jug, so as to surprise Trunchbull when she pours out of it. During the lesson, after terrorising and testing the children, she discovers the animal in the water and blames it on Matilda. The wrongful accusation angers the girl so strongly that she achieves telekinesis, using her mind to push the glass and its contents over Miss Trunchbull, who is fed up enough to leave the class.
After the lesson, Matilda confides to her teacher that she had used telekinesis to spill the glass. After demonstrating this skill, the girl is invited to come to Miss Honey’s house for tea, and she accepts. At the cottage, Matilda is told that she should use her telekinesis carefully, as it remains mysterious, and learns about her instructor’s life. The teacher was orphaned at five, living with her abusive aunt, Miss Trunchbull, afterwards. The headmistress has the young woman’s salary paid to her as a recompense for raising her, leaving her very poor. Miss Honey escaped and lived in a farm-labourer’s cottage off of the weekly one pound pocket money since. When Matilda is nearly home, she asks her teacher a set of questions regarding what her father, Miss Trunchbull and she called each other.
A week later, during the lesson with Miss Trunchbull, Matilda uses her telekinesis to write a message on the blackboard, which is supposedly from Miss Honey’s father’s ghost, commanding the headmistress to give her niece her wages and the family home. Trunchbull faints, and the little girl is thanked. The will of the teacher’s father is found and Miss Honey receives his life savings. Miss Trunchbull flees the town and Honey becomes good friends with Matilda. When the latter loses her telekinesis, the former theorises that this is due to her being moved to the top form and no longer having such an excess of energy to use for it.
One day, Matilda gets home from tea with Miss Honey to find her family frantically packing up to leave for Spain forever. The teacher explains this by saying that Mr Wormwood was probably handling stolen cars, and is now fleeing from law enforcement. Matilda states that she does not wish to join her family in moving out of the country and asks Miss Honey to adopt her. Her parents agree to the adoption and drive off hastily, leaving the happy pair behind.
Reception[]
Matilda is one of Dahl's best known children's novels, having won numerous awards and received praise from not critics and readers alike. For example, it won the ''Federation of Children's Book Groups Award'' in 1988 and was voted the ''Nation's Favourite Children's Book'' in 1998, according to a BBC Bookworm poll in Great Britain. Another notable BBC poll is The Big Read, carried out in the United Kingdom in 2003, where Matilda stood at the 74th place of 200 novels. Additionally, it was ranked number 30 on a list of the all-time best children's novels by School Library Journal. Favourable reviews from notable sources include The Times stating that there could hardly be a better heroine than Matilda herself, and Guardian writing that Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake had made an ''important and lasting contribution to children's literature.''
Due to the novel's popularity, it has been adapted in a variety of formats several times. One of the best known versions is the 1996 film entitled Matilda, starring Mara Wilson in the main role. Although commercially unsuccessful, it received critical acclaim. Another popular adaptation is Matilda The Musical, which premiered in 2010 and is praised by audiences and critics alike. A film adaptation of the musical was released by Sony Pictures Releasing and Netflix in 2022. The latter of those will also make an animated version of the book. Additionally, several audiobooks of Matilda exist, one of which — by Kate Winslet — was shortlisted for an Odyssey Award by the American Library Association.
See also[]
- The BFG by Roald Dahl
- Carrie by Stephen King