Classics Corner: Matilda by Roald Dahl; The Gold Standard of Dahl's Illustrious Career

Classics Corner: Matilda by Roald Dahl; The Gold Standard of Dahl's Illustrious Career




By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews




Spoilers: There are many who believe that the definitive Road Dahl book is Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (even more so if they grew up with the 1971 film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory starring Gene Wilder). Don't get me wrong, Charlie is a wonderful book. Who can forget the luscious candy room where everything is edible, the great glass elevator which takes you into every room in the factory, the spooky tunnel, Violet Beauregard turning into a blueberry, and Charlie Bucket winning the factory in the end?

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a great book, but the true gold standard, the best of Dahl's work, is his tale of a well-read genius telekinetic little girl who decides that she has had enough of bullying adults. Roald Dahl's best book is Matilda.

Matilda is the second child of Harry and Zinnia Wormwood, a crooked used car salesman and his Bingo playing wife respectively. While her repulsive parents and dim older brother sit in front of the TV all day, Matilda learns to read at three. When her parents and brother go off to their daily activities, Matilda walks by herself to the public library. The kindly librarian, Mrs. Phelps encourages her to read longer adult books so that by the time she is five, Matilda's reading list includes Great Expectations, Jane Eyre, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, The Grapes of Wrath, Animal Farm and others.

While most parents would be impressed, the Wormwoods are not. They constantly belittle and abuse Matilda. That's nothing compares to what Matilda receives at school. The headmistress, Miss Trunchbull, is a terrifying beast of a woman. She insults and abuses the students. Trunchbull is the nightmare of every school kid.

However there is a light in this education nightmare. Matilda's teacher, Miss Jennifer Honey, is a kind soul who bonds with Matilda when she learns the girl can solve difficult math problems in her head and can read books above her level.

Matilda also discovers that she has telekinetic powers and can move things with her mind. Her new friendship with Miss Honey and her discovery of her powers inspire the young girl to take matters into her own hands and fight the adults who oppress her.

Matilda is a great example of Dahl's extraordinarily gifted writing. He always had a talent for drawing in Readers with intrusive comments. Matilda begins in such a way. The opening features a narrator getting irritated with parents fawning over their children. If the Narrator were a teacher, they would describe the kid slightly differently.

“If I were a teacher I would cook up some real scorchers for the children of doting parents,” the Narrator tells us. 'Your son Maximilian is a total washout….I hope you have a family business you can push him into when he leaves school because he sure as heck won't get a job anywhere else.’ Or if I were feeling lyrical that day, I might write, 'It is a curious truth that grasshoppers have hearing organs in the side of the abdomen. Your daughter, Vanessa, judging by what she's learned in this term has no hearing organs at all’....... I think I might enjoy writing end-of-term reports for the stinkers in my class.”

However, the Intrusive Narrator knows real talent when they see it and the Reader can feel the anger that a gifted child like Matilda is born to such an awful family. The book describes the Wormwoods as shallow, superficial, simple minded people. Matilda, by contrast, is more intelligent and self-aware. When Matilda reads books, she finds adventure and friendship, things she doesn't have. The narration says, “The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives. She went on olden-day sailing ships with Joseph Conrad. She went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and to India with Rudyard Kipling. She traveled all over the world while sitting in her little room in an English village.”

Dahl’s writing sees the world the way that kids see it, especially where adults are concerned. Dahl's adults are either good or bad. There is no in between. This is especially true of the adults in Matilda.

As previously stated, The Wormwoods sans Matilda are lazy couch potatoes who can't understand why Matilda would want to read when she has a TV in front of her. They constantly neglect and belittle their daughter. However, Matilda fights back by using her brain. She plays pranks on her unassuming parents like gluing her father's hat to his head or borrowing a neighbor’s parrot to make them think the house is haunted. The pranks are her only defense in a family that doesn't understand or love her.

Dahl also presents an even worse adult in the Trunchbull. She is the type of sadist who would pull a girl's pigtails and send her over a fence or force feed a large chocolate cake to a boy during an assembly for fun. She has several means of torture such as the Chokey, a closet with a door of sharp spikes and broken glass at her disposal. Miss Trunchbull's secret is that she is so reprehensible that no adult believes their kids when they tell them how bad she is and the ones that do are often afraid of her. It falls to the children to fight against her and they act like veterans in a long war that can't be won.
The antidote for Trunchbull and the Wormwoods is Miss Honey, the good adult. Miss Honey is a sweet kind fragile woman who the Narrator tells us has the unique talent of making children love her. She recognizes Matilda's intelligence and knows that she is capable of great things.

However, Miss Honey’s past is not a happy one. She had been abused as a child and still is in fear of her abuser. In an all too frightening and real moment, Dahl shows how childhood trauma can manifest itself in adulthood. Miss Honey is still so emotionally scarred that she can't cut herself off from her abuser. All she can do is provide a light and guidance for her students and become a catalyst to inspire Matilda's heroism.

Matilda's telekinesis comes about in a strangely natural way. It is an emotional reaction to all the stress that her family and Trunchbull put her under. It is also because of the boredom of learning lessons that are too easy for her. Her revenge against Trunchbull is sort of a light-hearted version of Carrie White’s.
Instead of Carrie using her telekinesis to enact revenge and cause chaos against all that she feels wronged her, Matilda is more selective. Matilda only uses them against Trunchbull and that is after she bullies another student.

Matilda knows her villains and she knows the cause of her abuse: Trunchbull and her parents. She is active in Trunchbull's removal, not just for herself but for Miss Honey and the other students.
Outside forces remove her parents from her life, but Matilda is once again instrumental in offering the right suggestion over where she will live afterwards and giving herself the happy home that she deserves.

While all of Dahl's books present wonderful imaginative situations with just the right touch of darkness so things don't get too saccharine, Matilda is his best. It is the crown jewel in Dahl's literary treasures.