her father, and Miss Trunchbull. This combative spirit is a central trait of the protagonist’s characterization and is conveyed – with minor differences – both in the book and in the movie,
In the former, the actions Matilda performs to punish her father always come after one of his outbursts towards her. In the book, the reader is presented with the following events: the first time Matilda decides to have her own little victory over her father was when she asked him to have dinner in her bedroom so that she could read a book instead of watching TV. He denies her the possibility and it is then when Matilda first gets tired of being insulted and discredited. So, she puts some superglue on her father’s hat so that it sticks to his hair. When he arrives home, he cannot take it out and the next morning, her mother has to cut his hair to let the hat go.
The second punishment comes when Mr. Wormwood tears off a book from the library that Matilda is reading. Instead of crying, she remembers a boy who has a parrot that can speak. She borrows the parrot, takes it home and hides it in the chimney where no one could see it. In the evening, when they were having dinner, the parrot starts talking and making noise. The family notices a presence but cannot see anything or anybody, so they get so scared they run away from the house.
The last of these actions against her father occurs when Mr. Wormwood is talking with his son about his earnings that day and makes him do some calculations on a piece of paper. Matilda is able to calculate in her head as her father is dictating the numbers to her brother and she immediately tells the result. First, his father tells her to shut up but then he looks at his paper and checks that Matilda’s answer is correct. Instead of congratulating her, he calls her a cheat and tells her she must have seen his paper before as it is impossible for her to have done those calculations on her own. Again, Matilda takes action and puts some of her mother’s platinum blonde hair dye in his father’s hair lotion, so the next morning her father’s hair is blonde.
The film mirrors these scenes with some differences. Only the episodes of the superglue on the hat and the hair dye are presented, but the one involving the parrot is not included. The hat and the superglue scene takes place at Mr. Wormwood garage. He is there with his son and daughter explaining his dark deeds to sell more cars. Matilda considers these practices to be wrong and that is why she puts some glue she finds in the garage in his father’s hat. In a subsequent scene at a restaurant where the family is celebrating the mother’s earnings in the bingo, Mr. Wormwood tries, pathetically and unsuccessfully, to take it out making a fool of himself in front of his relatives and the other customers. The second prank Matilda plays on her father in the film is the hair dying after the calculations sequence; in this case, the events in the movie are rather similar to those narrated in the book.
The last teaching that Matilda gives her parents as a rebellion against their bad actions is her refusal to go with them when they are leaving the country. At the same time this helps to show once again how little Matilda’s parents cared for her. In the book, Matilda tells them she wants to stay with Miss Honey. Mrs. Wormwood’s reaction is “It’ll be one less to look after”, to what the father replies that if she wants to stay: “It’s fine with me” (Dahl, 1988; 2016: 232). In the film, this scene is treated in a slightly different way, probably as a means to pave the way for the less gloomy ending we will describe later. Matilda’s parents go to Miss Honey’s to pick Matilda up and they tell her they are leaving the country. Matilda asks Miss Honey to adopt her, and she takes the adoption papers from her schoolbag —she had them ready just in case something like this might happen— and makes her parents sign them. The adoption is therefore legally made, and we can even see a more emotional reaction on Matilda’s mother: “You’re the only daughter I’ve ever had, Matilda, and I never understood you, not one little bit”, but, as the narrator comments, this was maybe “the first decent thing they ever did for her daughter, the Wormwoods signed the adoption papers” (DeVito et al., De Vito, 1996: 1:30:25).
As for her fight against Trunchbull, Matilda takes action not only as a response to direct attacks towards her but to other children in the book. For instance, in the event described before with Bruce and the chocolate cake, when the child ends up eating the entire cake, all his schoolmates cheer him and this is seen as a victory of all of them over Trunchbull, who gets even more enraged. Even though the scene is repeated in the film, there are small details that are presented differently in the movie. In this particular case, the film shows us Bruce suffering at some points, although in the book he never shows “sign of flagging or giving up” (Dahl, 1988; 2016: 123). When we see the boy feeling he cannot stand it anymore, Matilda stands up and cheers him, which gives him the strength to go on. In the book, this happens when he has almost finished eating, and the narrator refers to “someone”, not Matilda in particular, who encourages him to make it. The ending and the consequences of this event are also slightly different: in the film, Bruce finishes eating the whole cake and when he does, there is cheering and clapping coming from the rest of the students. Trunchbull’s reaction in the book is taking the empty plate and crashing it on top of Bruce’s head. In the film, it is him who takes the empty plate and raises it up as a trophy, albeit Miss Trunchbull also ends up crashing the plate on his head. In addition, all students are compelled to spend five more hours at school copying the dictionary as a retribution for this collective offence.
In addition, Matilda also takes action against Trunchbull due to her wicked behavior towards Miss Honey in the past. Miss Honey is Miss Trunchbull’s niece, but when her father died, Trunchbull kept Miss Honey’s inheritance and threw her out of her own house. The method to make Miss Trunchbull pay for her bad behavior is different from the strategies Matilda used against her father. This time, she would react against adults’ abuse of power through magic.
This element plays a key role in Dahl’s story. A superheroine with the power of telekinesis which she uses only to face the adults’ mischievous actions is quite attractive for children, and at the same time it acts as the element for the final catharsis. Children’s stories and fairy tales have this as one of their main traits. As Sendak (1989: 151) proposed, “it is through fantasy that children achieve catharsis. It is the best means they have for taming the wild things”. In Matilda, it is through the use of magic that readers get catharsis, especially when Matilda finally reestablishes order at the end of the story by using her magical power to get rid of “the wild thing” epitomized by Miss Trunchbull.
At this point, it is worth mentioning that the use and treatment of the magic element is one of the most salient differences between the book and the film adaptation. Indeed, magic and its effects are more emphasized in the film, probably to adapt better to the expectations of family film spectators. Magic (at least the kind of magic that permeates Matilda) tends to imply “action”, and action is a mechanism to fast-track the pace of the events happening on the screen. Matilda’s magical element is thus a potential center of attraction and entertainment for the audience, especially for children, which is probably the reason why it has been fostered in the motion picture. By contrasting the book and the film, we can clearly see the latter includes more scenes concerning magic than the former.
If we delve into the use of supernatural powers in the book, we can observe it is the rage that Matilda feels after seeing an injustice or being treated unfairly what gives her the power of telekinesis. Her magic only appears as a source of power to defeat the adults that are attacking her or other disempowered characters such as Miss Honey or other children, but she never uses it to attack her parents or for any other purpose. The reader’s first encounter with magic happens in the chapter entitled “The First Miracle” when Lavender, a girl in Matilda’s class, puts a newt in Miss Trunchbull’s glass of water. In order to frighten the headmistress, Matilda tumbles the glass with the power of her eyes and the newt jumps into Miss Trunchbull’s clothes. There is a “second miracle” when Matilda is able to show Miss Honey the power she has in her eyes, and a third one when she moves a chalk with her power and writes a message on the board for Miss Trunchbull. In this case, Matilda wants Miss Trunchbull to believe that the one who is writing is the ghost of Miss Honey’s father, and that he will come to haunt her if she does not do as he says. Because
