Reading to my children at night is often the highlight of my day, and recently we’ve been enjoying some Roald Dahl fare. This, our fifth Dahl book since last month, has been a real treat for our family to read, making me keenly aware that Dahl wrote with more than just children in mind. He wrote for the children in all of us, especially those of us who sometimes wish we’d never grown up…. because some grownups aren’t worth knowing. That’s a key lesson I get from reading Matilda at least!
Little 5-year-old Matilda Wormwood is an exceptional child. Able to read by age 3, she soon devoured the entire children’s section at her local library and then began working her way through many of the great books in English literature—even though she didn’t understand all the words.
Matilda’s main problem was that her parents refused to acknowledge her genius, instead discouraging her at every opportunity, calling her horrible names, and wishing she’d put those books down and watch TV like a normal person. Her parents were also straight-up horrible people anyways, so occasionally Matilda would scheme ways to get back at them. At first, I wasn’t sure what to think of this—dishonoring the parents, even when they deserved it. Of course, these scenes gave us good laughs, but they gave us opportunity for comment too.
When Matilda enters her first kindergarten class, she proves to her kind young teacher, Miss Honey, her prodigious abilities and gets special treatment from that day forward. This treatment involves testing out of the basic ABCs and simple math and moving ahead into the more difficult textbooks of the older kids.
The main nemesis of the story is Miss Trunchbull, the school’s Headmistress, who’s really a monster of a human being. I marked, for example, the first time she enters the Kindergarten class and glares at the students.
“Not a very pretty sight,” she said. Her expression was one of utter distaste, as though she were looking at something a dog had done in the middle of the floor. “What a bunch of nauseating little warts you are.”
Everyone had the sense to stay silent.
“It makes me vomit,” she went on, “to think that I am going to have to put up with a load of garbage like you in my school for the next six years. I can see that I’m going to have to expel as many of you as possible as soon as possible to save myself from going round the bend.” (141)
Not a pretty sight indeed. But the terrible evil of this woman and of Mr. and Mrs. Wormwood make the plot of this story and the connection between Matilda and Miss Honey all the more reasonable and necessary. It’s a comedy, a dark comedy, and ought to be a tragedy, but it’s not. It’s a fantastic blend of humor and drama, mundanity and magic, and of the Dahl books we’ve read together so far, I think this has been our favorite.
Next up for us is the only other Dahl book we own, The BFG, and I’m looking forward to it, if only to find out what “BFG” stands for! I’ve also got a small collection of Dahl’s short stories for adults on my Kindle that I may continue reading, though I’ll have to squeeze them into my already-full reading schedule. Never a dull moment.
©2022 E.T.
Read More from Roald Dahl:
- Adult Short Stories:
Over to You (1946)
Someone Like You (1953)
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (1977) - Children Fiction:
James and the Giant Peach (1961)
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964)
The Magic Finger (1964)
Fantastic Mr. Fox (1970)
Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator (1972)
Danny the Champion of the World (1975)
The Enormous Crocodile (1978)
The Twits (1980)
George’s Marvelous Medicine (1981)
The BFG (1982)
Dirty Beasts (1983)
Boy: Tales of Childhood (1984)
The Giraffe, the Pelly, and Me (1985)
Going Solo (1986)
Matilda (1988)
Esio Trot (1990)
The Minpins (1991)
The Vicar of Nibbleswicke (1991)