Matilda

Miss Honey and Matilda walk through the village and into the countryside toward the teacher’s cottage. On the way, Matilda becomes animated, hopping with energy and yammering rapidly about all the things she might be able to do with her new power. Miss Honey cautions her not to get too excited but move forward cautiously and learn carefully about her power.

Miss Honey wonders aloud if Matilda’s ability is connected to her precocious mind. Matilda asks what “precocious” means, and Miss Honey explains that it’s a person who “shows amazing intelligence early on” (180). She informs Matilda that the girl had a strange look on her face when she made the glass move, and asks how she felt when doing it. Matilda says she enjoyed it and that it was much easier the second time.

They continue on a narrow dirt lane to a tiny brick cottage nestled amid hazel and blackberry bushes and long grass, sheltered by a huge oak tree. Miss Honey recites a passage of poetry by Dylan Thomas that promises his daughter that no wolf will ever harm her “in the house in the rosy wood” (184). Matilda says the poem sounds like music.

At the low front door, Matilda hesitates: The cottage seems unreal and reminds her of fairy-tale houses. It’s dark inside. Matilda walks through to the tiny kitchen, where a sink stands below a rear window and a hand-pump paraffin stove rests on a shelf. Miss Honey gives her a bucket to fetch water from a well out back, which she does.

Matilda asks if Miss Honey is poor; the teacher replies that she is, “very.” They bring the tea, along with bread with margarine for Matilda, to the sitting room, a tiny, bare-walled space with overturned boxes for chairs and table. Matilda is stunned by the poverty. Miss Honey admits that she eats her entire day’s meal at the school lunchroom. The bread and tea are nothing like the elaborate food Matilda eats at home, but somehow she finds it more fun. She senses a mystery about the place and longs to know what it is.

Miss Honey says Matilda’s new power is unlike anything in human history. She wonders if the power has a limit, and Matilda thinks it would be fun to know. 

Matilda asks if Miss Honey is poor because of her salary; the teacher says she gets about the same amount as the other instructors. Matilda says it must be nice not to have so many possessions to maintain. Miss Honey tenses up, then decides it’s ok for Matilda to know the story of her financial hardship.

Matilda is the first guest to visit the cottage in the two years Miss Honey has lived there. Miss Honey says Matilda is remarkably mature for her age, a “grown-up child” (195). Miss Honey isn’t brave, but she needs to tell somebody her story, and she’s chosen Matilda.

The teacher says she was born in a nice house not too far away. Her father was a doctor, but her mother died suddenly when Miss Honey was two, and her father brought in his wife’s sister to care for her. The aunt was cruel but hid it from Miss Honey’s father. Three years later, he died by suicide, or at least it looked that way—Matilda wonders if the aunt secretly murdered him—and the aunt became Miss Honey’s guardian.

The aunt suddenly treated Miss Honey dreadfully, until she would shake with terror whenever the aunt appeared. She obeyed her aunt’s orders instantly and soon became her slave. (Matilda asks if the aunt beat her, but Miss Honey doesn’t want to talk about that.) She attended Matilda’s school and then a teacher’s training college nearby but returned every day to keep house for her aunt. After graduation, she began to teach at Crunchem Hall, but her aunt demanded her salary for 10 years to pay for all her childhood food and clothing, and Miss Honey was too scared to say no.

Finally, Miss Honey escaped: With a tiny allowance, she rents the cottage from a farmer for pennies a week and sleeps on the floor. Her aunt objects but can’t stop her. Matilda asks why she doesn’t simply claim her old house, but her father’s will went missing around the time he died, and her aunt produced a letter deeding the house to her. Matilda says Miss Honey should hire a lawyer, but she can’t afford one.

Besides, the aunt is a respected member of the community. Matilda asks who the aunt is. Miss Honey replies, “Miss Trunchbull.” 

Matilda is shocked by the revelation that Trunchbull is Miss Honey’s aunt. The teacher admits that her aunt would make her bathe, and if her aunt deemed the bath incomplete, she’d hold Miss Honey’s head under the water.

Miss Honey changes the subject and wonders if Matilda would like to try some experiments with her new power. Matilda, though, wants to go home so she can ponder what she’s just learned.

Miss Honey walks her home; there, she asks Matilda to forget about what she told her about her aunt. Matilda agrees to never talk about it to anyone, including Miss Honey, but she won’t promise not to think about it.

She asks her teacher three questions. What did Trunchbull call her father? “Magnus.” What did her father call Trunchbull? “Agatha.” And what did they call Miss Honey? “Jenny.” 

It’s still afternoon, and Matilda’s house is empty as usual. She grabs one of her father’s cigars and takes it upstairs to her bedroom. She has a plan to help Miss Honey, but it’ll take practice.

She clears her dressing table, places the cigar on it, and sits on her bed 10 feet away. She concentrates, tells the cigar to “move,” and it quickly rolls off the table onto the floor. She replaces the cigar and tries to get it to rise up: One end lifts for 10 seconds. After an hour of trying, Matilda can get the cigar to hover for a minute. Exhausted, she lies back and falls asleep.

Within a week, Matilda can move the cigar any way she likes. It’s time to put her plan into effect. 

On Thursday, Trunchbull’s day to conduct the afternoon class, Miss Honey reminds the students to be careful so that they don’t get their hair or ears pulled. She also tells them to be ready for a test on the three-times table.

Trunchbull swoops into the room, checks her water glass for newts, and promptly starts quizzing one boy, demanding that he recite the three-times table backwards. He doesn’t know how; Trunchbull yells that the teacher hasn’t taught the students anything all week. Miss Honey says they know the tables forwards, and that learning them backwards is useless. Trunchbull berates her.

Trunchbull returns to the boy and asks more questions; frightened, he can’t speak. She picks him up, tosses him into the air, and catches him by the ankle upside-down. She thunders the correct answer and demands he repeat it.

Nigel jumps up and points at the chalkboard, where a piece of chalk is doing something. Trunchbull turns. The chalk writes, “Agatha, this is Magnus This is Magnus.” It continues: “It is Magnus And you’d better believe it” and “Agatha, give my Jenny back her house” (221). Trunchbull turns white with fear. The writing continues, demanding that Trunchbull return to Jenny her salary and leave town, or Magnus will get his revenge on her for killing him. Finished, the chalk stops and drops to the floor.

Trunchbull falls to the floor in a faint. Miss Honey sends someone for the nurse. Nigel grabs the water pitcher and, claiming this should rouse her, douses Trunchbull’s face. Still, she lies prostrate. It takes six people to lift and carry her to the sick-room.

Miss Honey dismisses the class, then erases the chalkboard. As Matilda walks past, the teacher gives her a hug and a kiss. 

The next day, Trunchbull doesn’t show up at school. Assistant headmaster Trilby calls her phone, but she doesn’t answer. He visits the house where Trunchbull lives—Miss Honey’s family home in the woods just out of town, known as the The Red House—and finds everything in place but no one there and all clothing removed.

The day after that, Miss Honey receives a letter from a local law firm that announces that her father’s will has suddenly turned up. It gives her The Red House and his bank accounts. Quickly she moves in, and Matilda visits, “a welcome visitor to The Red House every single evening after school” (228). The two become close. At Crunchem Hall, Mr. Trilby is appointed headmaster, and Miss Honey gets Matilda transferred to the top grade level, where she does well.

One afternoon at The Red House, over tea and bread with strawberry jam, Matilda says her strange power to move things has stopped. Miss Honey says she thought this might happen: Matilda’s mind didn’t have enough to do in the bottom level at school, and all her mental energy shot out through her eyes and moved things. Now that she’s at the school’s top level, her mind has plenty of work. Matilda confesses that she’s kind of glad the power is gone: “I wouldn’t want to go through life as a miracle-worker” (230).

Matilda walks home to find her parents hurriedly packing. They tell her they’re all moving to Spain, and she must pack quickly. Matilda doesn’t want to leave her school and her friends, but her father tells her to shut up and do as she’s told.

Matilda runs back to Miss Honey’s house, where, out of breath, she tells the teacher about her family’s decision to leave. Miss Honey says she’s not surprised, because it’s common knowledge in the village that Mr. Wormwood is part of a gang of crooks who receive stolen cars and re-sell them to unsuspecting buyers. The police must be on their way to arrest him.

Matilda begs Miss Honey let her live at The Red House. The girl thinks her parents would agree to it. They run back to Matilda’s house, where she tells her parents she wants to stay with Miss Honey. The teacher says she’ll take care of the girl at no cost to them, but only with their permission. Mr. and Mrs. Wormwood shrug, deciding she’ll be one less mouth to feed and that it’s fine with them. Matilda jumps into Miss Honey’s arms, and they hug. The rest of the Wormwoods pile into a car; it tears off down the road, tires screeching, and disappears around the corner, gone “for ever.”