An extra piece for Between The Stool’s Year of Wonders
Children’s stories can have great power and influence – and on adults too. Jesus’ directive to be childlike to see His kingdom also, I think, applies to reading and watching stories with the juvenile ability to lift the veil.
This is an example of a story that can be seen through magical lenses, a story that may not of itself seem profound; as an adult, I didn’t necessarily find it enjoyable.
But I felt strangely drawn to revisit Matilda, which I saw at the cinema nearly 30 years ago, and was surprised at how much I was able to draw from it…although I’m unsure how much of what I’ll say was intended by the author or filmmakers.
School imposed a diet of Roald Dahl – who gets to choose which books we know?
The list is much like that of classics in Matilda: here is your recommended reading. It is not terribly long and will be reinforced by repetition. The Squid and the Whale says that we read at school the worst books by the best writers. And I add, we often read them in a way that denudes them of enjoyment. My recollection of Dahl’s work was that it was silly and nasty, and a surprising choice for schools; Matilda opens with fantasy negative school reports. I wondered at how relevant that was to the book; it certainly misses the point of reports and makes amusing not only insults but unprofessionalism.
I know Matilda as an adult and as an adaptation – it was published when I was at high school. Most of what I’ll say comes from the 1996 movie with and by Danny DeVito – he produces, directs, narrates and stars opposite his real wife. He must have badly wanted to bring this children’s book to the screen – I wonder why?
I wondered that more as I thought on the story and its themes and messages.
I’m aware of a more recent musical rendition of 2022, starring Emma Thompson, and will make references to it; but as well as struggling with the genre, I found that I was more connected to the earlier version with the redoubtable Pam Ferris as the headteacher – perhaps the first time I saw Pam – and Embeth Davidtz as charming Miss Honey.
Matilda begins with a premise we found in family Ness stories: the lonesome child. Although she has both parents, Matilda must feel as deprived of family support as any orphan. Her parents are emotionally abusive and negligent, and Matilda has a strong sense of otherness, even as Jack in Titanic puts it (in a deleted scene), of being “mailed to the wrong address.” I wonder if some of us feel that those around us – and please don’t infer anything about my own family – are very different to us, and we may wonder why we are surrounded by them. I suggest that there’s a soul lesson and agreement to incarnate with these people. (That doesn’t mean that abuse is acceptable or asked for, nor that we must stay with them).
Matilda’s loneliness is assuaged by books. Hence her haven is the library, since books are not valued – and are actually mutilated – at home. Television and film can of course be a companion and solace too: not all books are worthy and much on our screens is. Dahl was afraid of TV killing off books. I do not privilege the book as a higher art form. But media can be used to block out and to disengage. However, in this household, the slapstick gameshows did unite and amuse the other three members, who make watching a family event.
Matilda is called ‘gifted’ due to her abilities, but Giftedness isn’t about being precociously academically talented – not on its own. Giftedness belongs with the neurodiverse family, although it is rarely mentioned among its members, such as autism and ADHD (I disapprove of the Ds). Matilda may be exceptional in other ways – sensitive to sound (hence the family’s interminable and inane telly watching would distress her) and to surprises and shouts – hence she would be likely overwhelmed by Miss Trunchbull. But Giftedness often brings strong moral convictions at injustice, and the courage to stand up to those abusing authority, as Matilda has and does. She is also uncomfortable with her family’s criminal business and has the ability to to recognise the men illegally but not very covertly watching them as police or feds, when her parents think that they’re salesmen. I’m wondering what, in the feds’ eyes, the Wormwoods’ crime is? Often it is more commercial than moral, harm to money (their own) than the public. {In the 2022 film, the watchers are mafia}
There’s an important point: advanced mental capacity doesn’t mean maturity. Academically, Matilda may be ready for college long before 18, but she is very much a girl, and would not fit in among her older peers until she herself fully reached adulthood. A lack of maturity in the story comes around its axial axiom.
The next turning point that will underpin the rest of the story comes when a slip of words from her father introduces a moral maxim to Matilda. I usually eschew voiceover in adaptations, but I was glad of Danny’s insight here. Just like the headteacher she’s soon to meet, Matilda’s father tells her that there’s a simple dichotomy based on minority and size: I’m right, you’re not; I’m big, you’re small, and thus you will kowtow to me. But when Matilda is sure that she’s not done anything wrong, only to display a surprising mathematical ability, she realises that she can switch round her father’s statement about punishment. What he says is: any person who does wrong should be punished. She is acute to the statement including adults, and that it does not preclude children being the punishers.
I wish her mind (and that of Dahl and the film’s creators) had gone further. Matilda has not understood punishment morally, and nor has she critiqued the notion of something nasty happening to those who allegedly ‘do wrong’ – what is wrong? She has already observed that what is called wrong can be arbitrary or at least relative and subjective.
In this story, punishment is a humiliating prank, but the person on the receiving end doesn’t know that this prank is in response to what is perceived as their wrong action, until the final scene with Miss Trunchbull. Punishment requires the punishee to know that what befalls them is punishment, and for what. Often it includes some public knowledge and witness; in this case, there is the witness, but when Matilda is chastener, it’s without the victim knowing why or by whom, in contrast to Miss Trunchbull’s penalties. Matilda plays tricks, often using her telekinetic powers to do so anonymously, ultimately blaming a ghost.
Punishment is not synonymous with retribution. Retribution is revenge, it’s getting back for what we perceive as a wrong, which can be in the sense of legalism’s ‘tort’ – damage or injury to be corrected, often by way of fiscal compensation. Punishment may be designed to show the punishee that their actions are unacceptable and immoral, although those are two different things; we can impose the implication of immorality on something that we simply disapprove of. We can do so on something which threatens us – such as Matilda’s prodigious mathematical capabilities – or something which might expose and dethrone our power over others. In that second sense, Matilda does achieve her aim, and it benefits more than herself; but a more enlightened system seeks to reform and heal those acting wrongly, and that is where this story falls down.
It is juvenile, but not unlike adult stories – including prevalent Bible reading.
The Gifted in me, which often involves multilateral thinking, does not know whether to discuss this, which is central to this sermon, now or later. Perhaps I will for now park it up and given you a moment’s pause to consider: what is our view of wrongdoing and punishment? How was it socialised into us? From whom and where, and at what age? How has that continued? How have we perpetuated this to others? And do you recognise the tenets in Matilda in our societal systems – judiciary, work – and in church (or other faith communities?)
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If we take Matilda as a parable, we can note that her being sent to school was the start of her salvation, although it initially seemed like a new set of suffering. In DeVito, her secret revenges on her father lead to his seeking a school for her. Her father wants her out of the house more and to be given a new set of values that dull his unusual daughter into conformity. The kind of harsh academy he chooses is unlike his own values, which might be called slovenly. But he has chosen a principal after his own principles – the bullying, nonsensical authority and one who operates unscrupulously and for personal gain, not care and service.
In the more recent musical, Matilda’s reason for going to school is different. Miss Honey appears at her home and one could say heavily advertises, even door to door recruits. Matilda says that she’s hitherto been homeschooled. “Would you like to be school schooled” asks Miss Honey, implying that school schooling is better, even the real thing as opposed to this lesser imitation of education. But like homegrown and homemade, there is a special quality to personalised schooling outside of the manufacturing educational system. I note that the book places Crunchem Hall as a private school, outside of the state sponsored network – is this thus a dig at independents? Roald Dahl attended several of these.
In 2022, due to Covid, homeschooling had become more popular. It wasn’t just fear of disease that took some kids out of school, it was the ethos and behaviour of the system which now was very apparent. I wonder if this Netflix film was a sort of backlash and an advert to return, although Crunchem Hall is hardly an attractive place to send children.
Is Matilda thus an advertisement for or critique of the educational system?
In both versions, Crunchem Hall is an imposing edifice. I thought the musical’s location at Bramshill House, a red brick Renaissance house of c1600, inspiring as well as a little disconcerting externally. (The film added a weird tower to this Hampshire mansion). It had been used as a police training centre, making it an appropriate choice for Crunchem Hall, although Crunchem prepares the kids to be policed rather than to one day themselves be controllers – or does the training involve both? In the Ferris film, set in California instead of Buckinghamshire, GB (like the musical movie), the grey walls and external chimney recall workhouses and bridewells. This felt like a house of correction, a break and resocialise institution with no other real outcomes but literally, to crunch its inmates. Miss Trunchbull’s ideal is like that of the Victorian workhouse: to be devoid of inmates.
Miss Trunchbull did not want joy or exploration to be part of the curriculum: only fear and conformity. In 2022, she speaks of the rule of her beloved sport as that which governs her school: STAY IN THE CIRCLE! There is no room for colouring outside of the lines here – or colouring at all. Her first scene in the playground shows her enjoyment of prowling publicly, picking out individuals to exemplify. Her punishments are so outrageous that children feel that they’d be disbelieved if they reported them. I think that can be transported to real life and not just kids.
I wonder if others had a physical education teacher that was a lasting bully? Despite her likeness to one I had, I wonder if I can muster a little compassion for Miss Trunchbull. She is peerless in more ways than one; she may be lonely. Her 1972 Olympics T-shirt suggests that she is living off past glory, trying to recreate that at home with shots and javelins that she can only throw in frustration at children. Of course not everyone wants children and that is fine; but I sense a bitterness so great that I wonder if Miss Trunchbull secretly longs for the children she didn’t bear and now is too old to If she really doesn’t like kids, how cruel that she is surrounded by them, perhaps in an obvious career following the end of her athletic one. Without stereotyping, I speculate that she may not seek husbands; in 1988 when the book was published, being gay might be very hard for her, since it was demonised – Thatcher’s Section 28 forbidding the ‘promotion’ of homosexuality in British schools came out that same year. I wonder if I might draw a parallel between Britain’s first female prime minister and Crunchem’s prime teacher. Margaret too is often referred to as mannish, with a deep voice, power-seeking but unfeeling, and in some people’s eyes, cruel and monstrous.
A more negative line is brought out by the 2013 piece by Eliot Glen on Salon’s website. Although I initially felt that the title of that post, calling the story transphobic, went too far, I see that there is a clear cause for concern in Miss Trunchbull’s depiction. Eliot states that “the” Trunchbull – not often given a name or title, thus depersonalising her – is ugly, mad and evil…and possibly trans. She’s mocked for her male attributes. She tries to be pioneering in a then male-only sport (did she hide her gender in the Olympics?). She was played by a man on stage. Eliot compares her with the good teacher, feminine and docile Miss Honey. Miss Trunchbull’s first act is to pick on someone because she hates girlish twee pigtails. In 2022, the ultimate punishment for Trunchie is having pigtails herself, courtesy of Matilda. (What did that earlier flash to Agatha looking Little Bo Peep-ish signify?) The Salon article said that her name, Agatha, isn’t revealed until the nice true man (her brother Magnus, which means great) seemingly comes back from the dead to tell her off. The portrait of good handsome Magnus in 96 is actually of Roald – although I’m not entirely comfortable or in agreement. Funny that this depiction of Agatha was left in to the highly PCed version in 2022 by Netflix (Dahl’s books were changed too, eliciting an outcry).
I want to clearly state that Between The Schools is a place of acceptance, and that being unlike your gender stereotype (who got to set that anyway?), or being single, or childless, or with a same sex partner, or trans, are never things that make you odd or wrong. In fact, we rather like people who are different: I hope you’ll feel especially at home. We do like to “offer a place to sit for those that are Between The Stools” 🙂
Again I raise that we’re not invited to pity or humanise our villain; she is not given opportunity to change, only flee…thus to continue her reign of terror elsewhere perhaps, or being so broken that her life is effectively over. Compare her with two devils in Good Omens and The Good Place, which we also look at.
Miss Trunchbull – who must be enormous fun to play – gets the best lines; her wide vocabulary, wit, and rhythm must make her potentially kindred and an example to highly intelligent Matilda. Was Agatha too unappreciated and stifled, even mocked, for her own Giftedness? Does this story illustrate how unappreciated, unchannelled ability may manifest in an unhealthy form?
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I want us to refocus on the parable angle.
Matilda’s powers come through being pushed to her limit (when she can bear TV no more, she discovers she can blow it up), and they stay for that period that she needs telekinesis against Miss Trunchbull. When she’s vanquished, she loses them.
I note how the children have learned to embrace their maggot status. In the musical, the kids even sing a complicated song in harmony about their own odiousness. Who has decided that being likened to a maggot (even in a Latin motto) is insulting? Interesting what we can be socialised into believing about ourselves if told often and forcefully enough; I think of government and church.
There’s an early time that Miss Trunchbull’s retribution turns on her. Without overt violence, she humiliates and even endangers Bruce Bogtrotter who has the temerity to eat her cake. He is made to eat way too much of another in front of the school. It’s a hard scene to watch, and we fear sickness or even explosion and choking; but Matilda initiates giving him encouragement; the hall joins in, and Bruce turns his ordeal into an achievement for which he’s feted. Now Miss Trunchbull is undermined, and seeks further punishment to regain her position.
But it is the beginning of the end for her – and I believe the times we live in parallel that of our own oppressors.
I feel that Miss Trunchbull’s also being a murderer and home usurper is too much. The latter makes her greedy and committing a crime in capitalism’s favourite area: that of property. But I’m wondering whether the parable aspect highlights something: that we’re being controlled by fear by someone or thing that not only has taken what is rightfully ours (government tries to own our homes, land, cars, money, and even bodies) and covered up its heinous acts…but they will be outed and put right.
Thus Matilda embodies the saviour trope: the chosen and called one into a place of darkness, working with and enlightening others.
In this story, Matilda finds a true family – and is one to Miss Honey. The school is henceforth governed by love. After the heidie [Scots] departs, joy and colour and informality infuse Crunchem, which gains a new sign. And the children don’t want to leave. It has become an educational youthful paradise.
Thus Matilda’s unhappy home life transports her to a school that she is integral in transforming, and she finds the comfort and belonging and appreciation that she didn’t at home. Both sets of bullies – at home and school – have to abscond as they become the pursued for their acts.
Therefore I see that Matilda has the potential to be a liberating parable, about education, systems, and also a reflection of the misunderstanding of God; but that the anti-queer message is also a possible reading, and that it is ultimately still pro-institution…but I want to leave with that phrase (which I borrowed from Little Women) – that it is governed by love, as I wish for all our world to be, which means respect, equality, freedom and joy. It isn’t just for children’s stories – remember how I began this?