scared and flees. It is in this way that she is finally defeated: Miss Trunchbull never comes back to school and Miss Honey gets back the inheritance her aunt unabashedly took from her.
For its part, the film also features the scenes in which Matilda uses her supernatural abilities on the glass of water with the newt and the flying chalk that writes the message on the blackboard, but there are more episodes where magic becomes the protagonist. Actually, the first time we encounter Matilda’s magic powers in the film is early in the story, when her father forces her to watch TV. Being books Matilda’s main source of happiness, it is when her father gets angry because he sees her reading instead of watching TV that we get the first hint of Matilda’s magical powers. As she enrages because of her father’s act of keeping her head towards the television, the TV explodes. It is through the narrator that the connection between Matilda’s rage and the use of magic powers is introduced: “Was it magic or coincidence? She didn’t know. It is said that we humans use only a tiny portion of our brains. Matilda might never have discovered her own great strength of mind [zoom to Matilda’s eyes] were it not for the events that began the very next day” (DeVito et al., De Vito, 1996: 21:37).
Additionally, the last scene in the class is longer in the film and, with the help of magic, Matilda not only writes the message on the board but also throws the board rubbers to Miss Trunchbull, and makes her fly all over the classroom and out to the corridors so that the other children can throw food at her and see she has been defeated. What is more, Matilda also uses magic against the Trunchbull to scare her when she breaks into her house and changes objects from their places and takes things out of the house like some chocolates or Miss Honey’s doll.
Contrary to what happens in the book, Matilda also uses her telekinetic power against characters other than Trunchbull. There are two clear examples that can help illustrate this point. The first is the scene where Matilda’s brother is throwing things at her and making fun of it. At that moment, Matilda looks directly at a carrot and sends it flying directly to his brother’s mouth. The second is related with the incident with the FBI agents who are registering the garage with no court order. When Matilda tells them what they are doing is illegal, they ignore her and so she stares at their car and makes it go down the street. Apart from foregrounding the role of magic, these decisions also add new touches of humor to the movie, something probably aimed at attuning it to the expectations of a family audience.
But not only does Matilda use her power to react against adults’ misdeeds. In the film, magic is, in a way, part of Matilda’s daily habits. As any other child would do with a regular toy, we can see her playing and having fun with magic when she is on her own at home as in the scene where she moves the objects in the living room all around with her eyes while dancing. Similarly, she uses it to make her life easier, as when she moves her school bag with her eyes from a cupboard to her hand or draws the curtains from the sofa. Therefore, there is a clear bond between humor, joy and magic in the movie whereas in the book, it is presented only as a tool to fight against the oppression of the powerful adults who cannot be defeated otherwise.
This fact resonates with the presence of the magic element at the end of the story. In the book, magic disappears when everything is settled. Once Miss Trunchbull is defeated, Matilda feels safe and she is happy at school and visiting Miss Honey after her daily lessons; that is why, some weeks later, she tries to move something and realizes that she has lost her power. However, in the film, her magic does not disappear: in the last scene, we are told that “she didn’t have to use her powers again. Well, almost never” (DeVito et al., De Vito, 1996: 32:06) while we see Matilda moving a book from the shelf from bed. In addition to foregrounding the relevance of magic, this detail – in conjunction with the scene of the adoption papers – helps build a more promising and brighter ending than the one in the book, with the little girl and Miss Honey standing in the middle of the road as Matilda’s family disappears in the distance in their car. Even if the end of the story is a happy one in both cases, this made-in-Hollywood finale veils the slight melancholy and bitterness of Dahl’s description as it seeks to leave a good taste in the audience’s mouth, a decision that probably fits in better with the type of ending we expect from a family film.
4.2.4 Matilda: A heroine or a villain?
Matilda’s outstanding features (both magical and mundane) and intellect, together with her adamant stand against adults’ oppression have turned her into one of Dahl’s greatest heroines (West, 1992: 90). However, this apparently obvious assertion has been challenged by scholars like Petzold (1992: 185–191), who states that Dahl’s unconditional siding with children seems to foster their most harmful instincts as it undermines natural parental authority, or Hunt (2001: 57), who claims that the driving forces behind most of Dahl’s protagonists (including Matilda) are hate, violence, and a taste for callousness. Under this light, their fair fight would be overshadowed by a relentless and sometimes gratuitous thirst for revenge. If we were to accept this train of thought, certain passages and attitudes in the book could be interpreted as examples of unnecessary and blatant cruelty. In this respect, some of the punishments Matilda inflicts on adults could be understood as excessive and her revenge considered far more violent than the actions that provoked it.
This could be the case, for instance, of the episode in which she hides the parrot in the chimney. This happens as a reaction to the negative answer of Matilda’s father when he denies her the possibility of having dinner alone in her bedroom so that she could read her book. It is true that his manners are objectionable and far from the regular treatment children deserve, but the action is not that serious for him to receive such a punishment. What is more, by hiding the parrot, Matilda eventually terrifies her whole family, not only the person responsible for the affront. In a similar way, it could be considered that the pain and humiliation his father had to endure when the hat with the superglue was stuck to his head is disproportionate and especially degrading for someone whose image is important for his job. Likewise, according to Hunt’s tenets, the punishment inflicted on adults and the protagonist’s behavior in this short list of events would depict Matilda gloating over others’ humiliations, an assumption that would add “sadism” to her inventory of attributes.
In line with the above, it can also be said that Matilda’s actions lead others to perform wicked vengeful acts and therefore, our protagonist may also be considered as a pernicious influence for other children. There is a clear instance in the book that proves this point. Placing the newt in the water is not Matilda’s idea even though it is her who moves the glass so that the newt goes into Trunchbull’s clothes. It is another child, Lavender, who comes up with the plan. Lavender’s wish to be a heroine like Matilda makes her catch the newt and premeditatedly put it into the jug: “She [Lavender] longed to do something heroic. (…) It was her turn to become a heroine if only she could come up with a brilliant plot” (Dahl, 1988; 2016: 130). It is then when she goes and catches a newt from the pond near her house and decides to put it into the jug the following day.
The aforementioned and other examples helped build the already-cited ambivalence of a character that apparently assumes the role of undisputable heroine whereas, at the same time, reveals a dark side that somehow qualifies her notable and laudable attributes. Conveying a clear portrait of this facet in the film would be a decision that may flout audience expectations of morality and innocuousness, thus jeopardizing the production’s global reception. In spite of the risk, the film decides to maintain these traits of ambivalence in Matilda’s character, albeit this feature is shown through different examples from those included in the book. Even though the newt scene is here portrayed as an on-the-spot decision that Lavender takes instinctively and without much thinking, or despite the fact that her father is just punished twice as the event with the parrot is omitted, the dark side of Matilda’s character and the negative influence she could exert on other children can be appreciated in the movie through other scenes that are not present in the book. As described in previous sections, it is Matilda the one who first and relentlessly encourages Bruce to eat all the cake, regardless of the boy’s obvious signs of distress and of what may happen to him if he goes on. Another example comes
