While interrogating Ms. Honey’s students, Ms. Trunchbull demands that one of the girls in the class prove she can spell the word ‘DIFFICULTY’. Amanda Thrip enthusiastically recites a poem they had learned the previous day:
Mrs. D, Mrs. I, Mrs. F, F, I, Mrs. C, Mrs. U, Mrs. L ,T, Y, spells DIFFICULTY!
Ms. Trunchbull growls, ‘Why are all these women married?’
It’s a fair question, to be honest, and probably the only time Ms. Trunchbull says anything remotely sensible in Matilda. Why should the marital status of the letters in the ‘Mrs. Difficulty’ poem matter? But coming from Ms. Trunchbull, we’re meant to understand that her displeasure with the poem is because she’s a mean, bitter, spinster (read: lesbian).
In the near 30 years since first seeing the film Matilda, having read the novel multiple times and listened to the audiobook on repeat until the tape broke, this little rhyme is one of the few lines of dialogue I actually remember. It’s also how I learned how to spell the word ‘difficulty’ and the poem still pops into my head every now and then for no apparent reason.
Matilda is a 1996 adaptation of the 1988 novel by Roald Dahl, directed by Danny DeVito. The youngest child of Harry and Zinnia Wormword (Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman), a crooked second-hand car salesman dad and bingo addicted mother, Matilda (Mara Wilson) is left from birth to fend for herself. By two she has taught herself basic life skills like dressing, cooking and reading. By four, she finds her way to the local library where she devours the whole children’s section before moving on to adult books. After one to many run ins with her father she is sent to Crunchem Hall to be ‘educated.’ There she meets her delightful teacher Ms. Honey (Embeth Davidtz), makes friends and comes face to face with Ms. Trunchbull (Pam Ferris) herself.
Movie adaptations of beloved texts too often disappoint devoted readers, but DeVito’s campy, State-side interpretation does a better than average job of bringing Matilda to life for the big screen. At 12, I might have been considered a little old for Matilda, but I was in no hurry to put down childish things and took myself off to see it in the cinema at the earliest opportunity. At 38, Matilda remains one of my favourite books from childhood and I still cry my way through the movie.
Sentenced to Crunchem Hall
Matilda wants, more than anything else, to go to school so she can keep expanding her mind and make friends. Her parents refuse, believing she is four rather than six, and her father needs her to stay at home so she to sign for the stolen car parts he has delivered to their house. Just when he’s tiring of her “misbehaviour” he meets Ms. Trunchbull who promises Matilda will get a proper education at her school, Crunchem Hall. Matilda is delighted, but on arriving at Crunchem Hall she finds a school where children are routinely terrorised, physically punished and sometimes publicly tortured. Ms. Honey, her first grade teacher, does what she can to protect the children from the Trunchbull’s worst excesses of violence. But, it turns out that Ms. Trunchbull is her aunt and Ms. Honey is another victim of the tyranny.
Even without the menace of someone like Ms. Trunchbull stalking the halls, school can be an extremely distressing environment for neurodivergent children. There is sensory overload, over and under-stimulation, seemingly arbitrary rules and hierarchies which must be obeyed, teachers can wield absolute and often unjust authority and stimming, fidgeting and doing anything other than ‘sitting still and paying attention’ are rarely welcomed. Our direct communication styles are often misinterpreted by teachers and peers as abrupt, rude or even insolent. We may reject the imposition of demands we feel unreasonable or react negatively when forced to study things we have no interest in.
Even though I experienced many, if not all of these things, at one point or another, primary school was also a refuge for me. Like Matilda, it was somewhere I could escape the tension and distress caused by my parent’s failing marriage. At school, I knew the rules, more or less, and what was expected of me, more or less. I have always been a nerd, finding much joy in learning new things and I lived to please my teachers even if they rarely appreciated my devotion. I was nowhere near as exceptional as Matilda (have I mentioned how much I hate maths?) but I didn’t stand out as a problem child either. I could usually just about keep the show together. The only thing my teachers ever noticed was my reading.
Read ALL the Books
Matilda is hyperlexic, teaching herself to read by two and reading books well beyond her years. By six I was, however, not so much reading as repeating texts from memory while struggling to recognise words on the page and was sent for remedial reading classes. Once I got the hang of it though, there was no stopping me, I developed a voracious appetite for books. Like Matilda, libraries were often a sanctuary for me: the peace and quiet, the musty smell of paper, no one thinking you’re strange for sitting alone and reading instead of playing with other children.
Matilda is really a film about the joy of reading. Multiple shots show Matilda reading contentedly or enthusiastically sharing what she has learned from her books. Even when her parents insist she join the nightly activity of eating dinner in front of the TV, she refuses to put her books down. Her relationship with Ms. Honey is partly built on their mutual love of reading and learning. Books for Matilda are an escape, a way to teach herself as her parents actively deny her an education and, most importantly, a way to feel less alone in a hostile world.
Standing up for Injustice
Viewers and critics alike, tend to focus on the development of Matilda’s super-power, her telekinesis, as the crux of the story, but this actually occupies very little space in the film. I would argue that her real power lies not in her ability to move objects with her mind but in her insistence resisting injustice at home and school. She stands up for her friends, calls out the unfairness she sees around her, tries to hold the adults in her life to account, and when that fails, takes their punishment into her own hands.
At school I had my own Mrs. Trunchbull to contend with in the form of my first class teacher. Ms. B_, let’s call her, terrified me. She had the height and build of Ms. Trunchbull, wore her salt and pepper hair cropped short and played the organ. The two years I spent under her rule were marked by public shaming of any child who arrived late, competitions as to who was most correctly dressed in the uniform, and extended periods sitting in the ‘bold corner’ for infractions I can no longer remember. It was no Chokey but, the shame was real.
The worst thing for me by far was prohibition on using the toilet outside of breaks, at which time we had to queue up and enter the stall whether we needed the toilet or not. I stopped drinking water to avoid the terror of possibly needing to go outside of break time, of asking for permission and/or wetting myself. As young and terrified as I was, I knew these rules to be, not just arbitrary, but completely unjust and I hated her for it.
Matilda immediately pegs Ms. Trunchbull for the bully she is and devises a punishment fitting to her (actual) crimes. Using her telekinesis against Ms. Trunchbull is a last resort, a tactic employed because she could never physically match Ms. Trunchbull’s strength. She is the spark that ignites a rebellion to rid the school of the tyrant. Ms. Honey is finally able to reclaim her family home and create a school in which every child is valued and apprecieted.
Choosing our Own Families
Ms. Honey and Matilda bond over reading and learning, but also the pain of their less than ideal family circumstances. Matilda’s parents subject her to passive, if not active neglect, and become increasingly hostile towards her the more she begins to express her own mind. ‘There’s something wrong with that girl’, ‘brat,’ or ‘smart alec’ are just some of the ways they talk about her. They assume the worst intentions about her behaviour and demand she submits unquestioningly to their authority. Ms. Honey is the orphaned niece of Ms. Trunchbull, who has emotionally and psychologically abused her from childhood into adulthood, leaving her without a father or home. Ms. Honey is the only adult who sees Matilda for the bright, caring girl she is and the only one who notices the pain Matilda is also experiencing at home:
“You were born into a family that doesn’t always appreciate you, but one day things are going to be very different.”
This is a sentiment many children need to hear at some time or another. But it feels especially true for neurodivergent children who are two often considered a burden to be managed or endured, rather than a joy. Her status as an outsider in her family made me feel less alone about the increasingly difficult relationships I had with everyone around me. Matilda does, however, get a happy ending and the chance to create a chosen family with Ms. Honey, where they both get to experience the joys of childhood they had been so long denied.
The Icky-Sticky Part
As much as I loved Roald Dahl’s books as a child, I recognise now the misogynist, anti-semitic, racist and imperialist overtones of many of his novels and stories. The depictions of the children and villains which populate his stories could be so cruel and crude that his editors often refused to publish his novels without extensive rewrites. By all accounts he was a very unpleasant man.
None of this, however, was enough to discourage Netflix from acquiring The Roald Dahl Story Company, and so we are likely to see many more adaptations coming out in the next few years. With Taika Waititi set to direct Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, I’ve no doubt these new adaptations will do justice to the people so maligned in previous versions.
Matilda is, perhaps, the one of the least problematic of Roald Dahl’s texts, but it does not escape his deep-rooted misogyny, queerphobia nor body shaming, most of which is targeted at the Trunchbull. From her name, to the purposely grotesque closeups of her face, Ms. Trunchbull is not so much woman as monster. Under Danny DeVito’s direction some of the original cruelty from the novel is softened but there is no redemption for Ms. Trunchbull. Still, it was the 90s and we won’t take legend and all-round nice guy, Danny DeVito, to task too much for reflecting the original text and a culture where queer people, and lesbians in particular, were very acceptable villains.
Despite all these issues, I think Matilda is still worth hanging on to. She showed me it was OK to read, nerd-out, speak my mind and stand up for injustice.