“So Matilda’s strong young mind continued to grow, nurtured by the voices of all those authors who had sent their books out into the world like ships on the sea. These books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: You are not alone.” ~(Matilda).
“A BOOK?! WHAT D’YOU WANNA FLAMING BOOK FOR?…WE’VE GOT A LOVELY TELLY WITH A 12-INCH SCREEN AND NOW YA WANNA BOOK!” ~(Mr Wormwood).
Why Matilda?
For the purpose of this blog, I am looking into the representation in literature of families of offenders, I am also looking at the voice of the child in relation to this topic.
Road Dahl’s Matilda meets both criteria; her father breaks the law, and the book offers us an insight into the perspective of Matilda (albeit through third person omniscient viewpoint).
Matilda is the youngest child in the Wormwood family. She lives with her parents and her older brother Michael. Mr Wormwood is a used car dealer and Mrs Wormwood is a homemaker, although this homemaking does seem to involve a quantity of TV dinners and visits to the bingo. Mr Wormwood’s car dealing seem to involve a broad interpretation of the law.
“Matilda longed for her parents to be good and loving and understanding and honourable and intelligent. The fact that they were none of these things was something she had to put up with. It was not easy to do so. But the new game she had invented of punishing one or both of them each time they were beastly to her made her life more or less bearable.”
Mr and Mrs Wormwood don’t see the value in learning from books (which Matilda accesses via visits to the local library).
“All the reading she had done had given her a view of life that they had never seen. If only they would read a little Dickens or Kipling they would soon discover there was more to life than cheating people and watching television. Another thing. She resented being told constantly that she was ignorant and stupid when she knew she wasn’t. The anger inside her went on boiling and boiling,“
They belittle her, and she feels the only way to express herself is to play tricks on them.
“Being very small and very young, the only power Matilda had over anyone in her family was brain-power. For sheer cleverness she could run rings around them all. But the fact remained that any five-year-old girl in any family was always obliged to do as she was told, however asinine the orders might be.“
“Matilda said nothing. She simply sat there admiring the wonderful effect of her own handiwork. Mr Wormwood’s fine crop of black hair was now a dirty silver, the colour this time of a tightrope-walker’s tights that had not been washed for the entire circus season.“
They don’t support Matilda in her learning, and they are dismissive of her intelligence. Although they allow her to start school.
At school (which is run by the fearsome Miss Trunchbull), Matilda meets the wonderful Miss Honey, her first teacher who becomes a close ally.
Miss Honey understands that Matilda doesn’t have a great home life, and she takes the child under her wing.
The book depicts an array of humorous caricatures, in Dahl’s unique style.
Mr Wormwood, for example, is a dishonest car salesman and is being pursued by the law.
“Sawdust in the gear-boxes, the electric-drill on the speedometer cables.“
Ultimately, he flees his home, along with Mrs Wormwood and Michael, with the family vaguely acknowledging that Matilda will be left in the care of Miss Honey.
As a subplot, Miss Trunchbull turns out to be Miss Honey’s aunt. She has been financially abusing Miss Honey, only giving her £1 to live on, and it seems has obtained an inheritance, following the death of Miss Honey’s father and Miss Trunchbull’s brother in suspicious circumstances.
Matilda uses supernatural powers in a plot to overthrow Miss Trunchbull, who eventually flees her home. Matilda’s superpowers diminish when she is moved up to the top class at school, and Miss Honey believes this is because Matilda’s brain is being put to it’s full use and no longer has space for the additional powers.
Matilda in the end is happy and thriving, left in the care of Miss Honey as the Wormwoods drive away.
Dahl presents Matilda as a separate entity to her parents. She is not ‘tarred with the same brush’, nor is she collateral damage, mainly because her parents allow her to enter into education, and it is through education that she is afforded hope and protection (via Miss Honey). In this respect, we must ask whether the Wormwoods can be viewed as entirely neglectful, because they do at least allow Matilda to go to school.
Matilda is not judged by her peers for her parent’s choices, and is shown to have an altogether different character and different values from those of her family.
How might Matilda have fared, though, if she had remained with her family? Perhaps being on the run with them would have meant that her formal education would have ended, and thus her life opportunities would have diminished. Not because of their offending per se, but because of their neglect of Matilda, and their inability to meet her needs.
It is interesting to consider that our perception of Matilda being ‘saved’ is influenced by her separation from her birth family. Although seeing as her parents are portrayed as dismissive and disinterested, we do not necessarily see this as a bad thing. There is equally no sentimentality on the part of Matilda for the loss of her parents, presumably as a result of a lack of attachment.
There is no explicit redemption for Mr and Mrs Wormwood in Roald Dahl’s Matilda. They are both portrayed as selfish parents who do not care about their daughter. Mr Wormwood is a dishonest and unethical businessman, while Mrs Wormwood is a portrayed as an unmotivated and uncaring mother.
Perhaps there is another story to be told - the origin story of the Wormwoods, and how they came to grow into parents who don't seem to notice their child.
The Wormwoods do not undertake any significant transformation through the arc of the story. They show no wish to change, and equally, no acknowledgement that they might need to. Mr Wormwood doesn’t express remorse for his crimes – he simply runs away from the law and takes his wife and son with him. Neither of the Wormwood parents reflect upon their relationship with Matilda, nor on their parenting style. They do not see any problems and therefore have no desire to change. Matilda is seen as the problem.
Ultimately, whether or not Mr and Mrs Wormwood have the potential for redemption is up to the reader to decide.
Overall, through Matilda, Dahl provides a positive representation of the child. She is a person in her own right, making choices separate to those of her family.
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