69 pages • 2 hours read
Roald DahlMatilda
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1988A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
Kids Are Worthwhile
One might assume that Matilda is simply the story of an exceptional girl who deserves, and wins, exceptional help and friendship. The deeper story, though, is that all children are exceptional and can do great things, if only their elders respect and nurture them.
Matilda truly is a genius: By age five, she reads at an adult level and can do math in her head. For a time, she also expresses a super-power, the ability to move objects at a distance. On the surface, the story is about how such a girl might escape her distinctly inferior adult caretakers. The book, however, isn’t simply about admiring and rooting for a brilliant kid. It also intends to inspire readers to look inside for their own special brilliance and to use Matilda’s experience as a guide to nurturing that genius in themselves.
Matilda’s parents don’t intimidate her so much as they disappoint her. She wants her father to be noble, but instead he’s a rat who cheats his customers. He even looks a bit like a rat. She wishes her mother would be a sweet person, but Mrs. Wormwood cares only about food, Bingo, and TV.
Matilda instead receives early help with her reading from Mrs. Phelps, the town librarian. The little girl later finds solace and inspiration in her growing connection with Miss Honey. She learns that at least a few grown-ups appreciate and respect her mind and that not all of them are thoughtless and mean. Matilda’s experience becomes a kind of road map for young readers, a guide that points them toward a search for mentors and helpful outsiders.
Matilda isn’t the only talented kid at school. Hortensia already has braved Trunchbull’s wrath with clever pranks, suffered her punishments, and grown stronger for that struggle. Lavender, inspired by Hortensia, plays an ingenious trick on Trunchbull; it works so well that the wrong person gets the blame, but Lavender at least deserves credit for creativity and effort. Several of the students in Matilda’s class, tormented by Trunchbull, stand up to her and argue for others whom the headmistress mistreats. Bruce Bogtrotter, forced by Trunchbull to eat an entire cake at a student assembly, displays great fortitude by completing the task and defeating Trunchbull’s attempt to humiliate him.
The story also is a reminder to adults that kids are bundles of potential who need grown-up help and encouragement. Matilda’s talents are spectacular, but this is a dramatized symbol of what every kid has inside, and those wonderful strengths can and should be nurtured by wise parents and teachers.
Pushing Back Against Evil
Kids are small and have little power, and sometimes adults are cruel to them because they can get away with it. Even while, in real life, such children are often in no position to stand up to these adults, the author wants children to have resilience in the face of cruelty, and through the main character, Matilda, he suggests one major way they can do that: by recognizing the absurdity in bullies. The heroic Matilda shows this resilience by seeing that mean people are as ridiculous as they are scary, and by pushing back against evil by undermining it with practical jokes.
Matilda “resented being told constantly that she was ignorant and stupid when she knew she wasn’t” (29), and she resolves it by realizing that she is smarter than her folks. Both parents look down on Matilda’s reading habit, but this doesn’t make her question her own abilities; instead, it helps her see her parents for what they are: ridiculous. The story hints that young readers might think about cruel elders in the same way.
To relieve her frustration, Matilda devises little pranks to upset her parents. This isn’t her finest hour, but it does allow her to tolerate their casual cruelty. Her successes in this game help her understand that she’s not helpless and can fight back if she needs to.
Miss Trunchbull, hearing from Mr. Wormwood that Matilda is useless, immediately concludes that the girl will be trouble, and she treats Matilda that way from the start. When Lavender puts a newt in Trunchbull’s drinking water, the headmistress promptly accuses Matilda of the crime and won’t be dissuaded. This doesn’t scare the girl at all, but it does make her angry: “Oh, the rottenness of it all! The unfairness! How dare they expel her for something she hadn’t done!” (164). Her anger gives her a new strength—the ability to move objects at a distance—which she promptly uses to dump the water glass, newt and all, onto Trunchbull.
Matilda later uses that ability to frighten Trunchbull into giving Miss Honey her inheritance and leaving town. This is her crowning achievement, one that uses her strengths against Trunchbull’s fear of being found out.
The story teaches that, even if grown-ups sometimes are large and scary, children can still believe in themselves and learn to push aside the mean words, see the absurdity in those adults’ antics, and resist them when they can.
Finding a New Family
During the course of the story, Matilda migrates from her old family, who don’t care about her, to a new one with Miss Honey, who loves and nurtures her. In the process, Matilda learns that a true family is supportive, not merely tolerant, a place where she can be her best and share her love and abilities. At the same time, Miss Honey discovers a little girl with whom she can build a family life.
Matilda’s parents aren’t much to hope for, and they’re almost useless as mentors to her newfound love of reading and learning. Her father goes so far as to tear up one of her library books. When she protests that she must return it to the librarian, Harry angrily shouts, “You’ll have to save your pocket-money until there’s enough in the kitty to buy a new one for your precious Mrs. Phelps, won’t you?” (41). Matilda knows that sulking or weeping won’t help; instead, she plays pranks on her simple-minded folks.
When she enters school, Matilda discovers that her teacher, Miss Honey, appreciates her quick mind and her advanced reading ability, and the girl begins to confide in the teacher. Matilda also makes friends with Lavender, a like-minded spirit, and with Hortensia, an older girl who teaches them about the dangerous Trunchbull. Lavender, though, accidentally gets Matilda in trouble. After this, Lavender no longer appears in the story.
Miss Honey recognizes Matilda’s genius, and she also is touched by the girl’s politeness, kindness, and complete lack of arrogance over her superb mental abilities. Miss Honey takes every chance to mentor Matilda, and they bond and become closer.
When Matilda learns the secret of Miss Honey’s tortured life with her aunt, Trunchbull, the girl makes a supreme effort to help her teacher by using her telekinetic power. Her trick frightens the headmistress into stopping her theft of Miss Honey’s salary and returning the teacher’s inheritance. In return, Miss Honey saves Matilda from her family, who are leaving for Spain to escape punishment for her father’s criminal behavior. Instead, the girl and the teacher form their own family and live together.
In the midst of their respective struggles with relatives, Matilda and Miss Honey meet, help each other escape from cruelty, and grow into a family of their own. They journey from bad relationships to caring friendships that evolve into the real family they both deserve.
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