MATILDA (NOVEL)

'''Matilda''' is a novel by Roald Dahl and illustrated by Quentin Blake. It was first published in London in 1988 by Jonathan Cape. It was adapted into a film in 1996.

Contents

Plot summary

Differences in the film adaptation

Trivia

Plot summary

The parents of Matilda Wormwood, unfortunately, care little about her, even though she shows strong signs of being a genius in the making, and they encourage her to watch television instead of reading books, which, of course, she prefers. Matilda instead goes to the library and amasses a great deal of knowledge, so that when she starts school, she is way ahead of everyone else. Her friendly teacher, Jennifer Honey, appeals to have Matilda moved up, but the evil headmistress, Agatha Trunchbull, refuses.
"The Trunchbull," as she is known, is a vicious monster. She keeps children in a horrific torture device called The Chokey, or swings them through the air, often without any evidence they have committed any crime. She punishes students who give incorrect answers in class or who talk back to her by forcing them to undergo some form of physical torture - one boy in Matilda's class is forced to stand in the corner on one leg, another is lifted off the ground by his long hair, and another is held by his ears. Of course,this is not physically possible in real life. The Trunchbull's treatment of her students is nothing short of child abuse and she seems to believe intimidation is the best method of teaching. She says her idea of a perfect school would be "one in which there were no children at all." She also says that she had never been a kid. The Trunchbull does stop short of beating the children with her riding crop, but only because to do so would be illegal; she often voices regrets that she is no longer able to punish the children in this fashion.
Meanwhile, Matilda discovers she has psychokinetic powers, a secret which she confides only to Miss Honey. She learns this when her best friend, Lavender, puts a newt in Miss Trunchbull's water, and when the Trunchbull blames Matilda for it, Matilda gets so angry she tips the glass over with her mind. Miss Honey is very curious about Matilda's powers and she takes Matilda to her home. They arrive at her cottage, where Matilda discovers Miss Honey is extremely poor. Matilda asks why, and Miss Honey explains how when she was two years old her mother died and her father was a doctor, who needed someone to look after everything at home, so he invited her mother's sister to come and live with him but she turned out to be a mean person who treated Miss Honey very badly when not in the father's presence. Miss Honey was 5 years when her father died, and the police decided he'd killed himself. Miss Honey had become her aunt's slave and did everything her aunt told her to: cooking, cleaning, ironing. When Miss Honey was an adult, she wanted to go to university but her aunt wouldn't allow it; however there was a teachers training college that was 40 minutes away and she went under the condition that she would keep up with her work. When she found a job the aunt demanded that she pay all her salary to except for 1 pound a week in order to be paid back for feeding and clothing her, and Miss Honey was so terrified of her that she agreed. She found the tiny cottage and rented it from a rhubarb farmer for 10 pence a week, and she covered it in honeysuckle and she planted hundreds of wildflowers, and when she moved out of her aunt's house she finally got her freedom. Matilda asks who the aunt is and Miss Honey reveals that it is none other than Miss Trunchbull. With this information, Matilda formulates a plan as to how she get rid of the Trunchbull for good.
When the Trunchbull investigates Miss Honey's class, Matilda uses her powers to write on the blackboard. She pretends to be the spirit of Miss Honey's father and demands that Miss Trunchbull give Miss Honey her wages and her father's house. At the sight of seeing this being written as though by an invisible hand, Miss Trunchbull faints and is carried from the school by the teachers.
The day following the chalkboard incident, Miss Trunchbull disappears, abandoning her brother-in-law's house. Also, his will turns up, and it is discovered that Miss Honey is the rightful heiress to his property. Thereafter, Miss Honey moves into her father's house and, with the Trunchbull gone, Matilda is moved into the top form where she loses all of her powers. Miss Honey believes that Matilda's brain now has to work hard instead of accumulating spare "brainpower" the powers would need: this, the two of them agree, is a good thing, as Matilda would not care to "go through life as a miracle worker". In the movie, Matilda does not lose her powers, but it is stated that she uses them less often.
Meanwhile, the law catches up with Matilda's father, who has been selling stolen cars. He decides to move the whole family to Spain (Guam in the movie version), but Matilda asks them to let her remain with Miss Honey. They agree, as it is less of a bother, sign the adoption papers, and drive away forever.
Matilda and Miss Honey make a loving family and live together in Miss Honey's father's house.

Differences in the film adaptation

As befits the visual medium, the film version is more active and visually impressive than the book. Some plot points are shortened or removed, while new details and action sequences are added. Miss Honey's poverty is not addressed; she lives fairly comfortably in her small cottage and is not mentioned to be paying money to Trunchbull, though the way she is dominated by her aunt at school suggests some kind of indentured servitude arrangement. The parrot prank is removed. Matilda is briefly locked in The Chokey, only described in the book, and Trunchbull's mansion undergoes two expeditions with their share of narrow escapes. Appropriately, the book goes into much greater detail about the benefits of books and even gives a list of the classical works Matilda reads. It also shows how advanced Matilda is, representing her an excellent cook.
The film is modernised and Americanised as a retelling: for instance, it takes place in the United States instead of the United Kingdom, Lavender Brown is black (dark-skinned people being missing in the book), and a boy is thrown out the window for eating M&M's in a literature class instead of Liquorice Allsorts during a Bible study class.
Smaller changes are those of ages, TV programmes and the like, and Matilda's brother is turned from a more-or-less ordinary boy to an idiot after his parents, while their mother shows some humanity by giving her daughter away because she's better suited for a life with Miss Honey - but "some" only compared to the book, where both parents drop their daughter like a rock. Trunchbull's violence to children is also slightly mitigated. When Miss Trunchbull hurls a pigtailed girl over the fence, the girl lands safely gathering flowers for class. In the book version, she lands flat on her face and is hurt.
The most significant divergence is that Matilda's powers are treated more as a conventional superpower and less as a miracle. The film and book both have her start by inadvertent, tiny movements (an exploding cathode ray tube aside), but in the film Matilda eventually goes on to lift and control child-sized objects, and to throw multiple small ones around at will. The final confrontation with Trunchbull turns into a match of overt physical force versus mental powers, powers she retains to use for trivialities. In contrast, characters in the book never lose their sense of awe and a degree of fear about dealing with forces larger than human. Matilda's triumph is moving a piece of chalk well enough to write a few dozen words, at the cost of considerable drain to herself, and she loses her abilities afterward. The characters' working theory is that her mental capacity is now being expended in her schooling.

Trivia

★ One of the Trunchbull's means of punishments is to forcibly make a fat (somewhat rude) boy by the name of Bruce Bogtrotter eat an enormous cake to try to make him sick after finding him guilty of stealing food from the kitchen (in many of Dahl's novels there is a rude character that is extremely fat). In ''Roald Dahl's Revolting Recipes'' one of the recipes is based on that cake.

★ A girl attributed with special powers also appears in ''The Magic Finger'', also by Roald Dahl- although they are different in many ways.

★ Possibly the most dramatic form of eye-power attributed to any of Roald Dahl's characters is The Grand High Witch from ''The Witches''- although they are of a far more dangerous nature and the character would most likely have more sympathy with Miss Trunchbull's attitude towards child justice.