Matilda (novel)
Matilda is a book
by British writer Roald Dahl.
It was published in 1988 by Jonathan
Cape in London, with 232 pages and
illustrations by Quentin Blake.
It was adapted as an audio reading by actress Kate
Winslet; a 1996 feature film
directed by Danny DeVito;
a two-part BBC Radio 4
programme starring Lauren Mote
as Matilda,
Emerald O'Hanrahan
as Miss Honey, Nichola McAuliffe
as Miss Trunchbull
and narrated by Lenny Henry;
and a 2010 musical.[1][2][3][4]
In
2012 Matilda was ranked number 30 among all-time children's novels in a
survey published by School Library Journal, a monthly with primarily US audience. It was the first of
four books by Dahl among the Top 100, more than any other writer.[5] Time included Matilda in its list of the 100 Best
Young-Adult Books of All Time.[6] Worldwide sales have reached 17 million, and since 2016
sales have spiked to the extent that it outsells Dahl's other works.[7]
Plot
In
a small Buckinghamshire village, Matilda
Wormwood, a five-and-half-year-old girl of
unusual precocity, whose parents treat her with disdain, resorts to pranks like
gluing her father's hat to his head, hiding a friend's parrot in the chimney to
simulate a burglar or ghost,
and secretly bleaching her father's hair, to get revenge on her parents
(particularly her father) for their rude and neglectful manners towards her.
Matilda has read a variety of books by different authors, especially at the age
of four, when she read many in six months.
At
school, Matilda befriends her teacher, Jennifer Honey, who is astonished by her
intellectual abilities. She tries to move her into a higher class but is
refused by the headmistress, the tyrannical Miss
Agatha Trunchbull. Miss Honey also tries to talk to
Mr. and Mrs. Wormwood about their daughter's intelligence, but they just ignore
her.
Matilda
quickly develops a particularly strong bond with Miss Honey and watches as Miss
Trunchbull terrorizes her students with deliberately creative, over-the-top
punishments to prevent parents from believing them. When Matilda's friend,
Lavender, plays a practical joke on Miss Trunchbull by placing a newt in her jug of water, Matilda uses an unexpected power of telekinesis to tip the glass of water containing the newt onto Miss
Trunchbull.
Matilda
reveals her powers to Miss Honey, who confides that she was raised by an
abusive aunt after her father's suspicious death. Her aunt is revealed to be
Miss Trunchbull, who appears (among other misdeeds) to be withholding her
niece's inheritance so that Miss Honey has to live in poverty in a derelict
farm cottage. Preparing to avenge Miss Honey, Matilda develops her telekinetic
gift through practice at home. Later, during a sadistic lesson that Miss
Trunchbull is teaching, Matilda telekinetically raises a piece of chalk to the
blackboard and writes on it, posing as the spirit of Miss Honey's late father
and demanding that Miss Trunchbull hand over Miss Honey's house and wages and
leave the region forever.
This
is soon done, and a short while later the school's deputy head teacher, Mr.
Trilby, visits Miss Trunchbull's house but finds it empty with no sign of her
next destination. As Mr. Trilby becomes the new head of the school, he proves
himself to be capable and good-natured, with the result that Matilda herself
advances to the highest level of schooling. Rather to her relief, she is no
longer capable of telekinesis; this is explained by Miss Honey as the result of
using her mind on a more challenging curriculum. Matilda continues to visit
Miss Honey at her house regularly, but one day finds her parents and her older
brother Michael hastily packing to escape from the police, who are after her
father for selling stolen cars. Matilda asks permission to live with Miss Honey,
to which her parents rather uninterestedly agree (her mother somehow finally
understanding Matilda's bond for her teacher). So both she and Miss Honey find
their happy ending, and the school's atmosphere and curriculum have
overwhelmingly improved under Mr. Trilby.
Dahl's inspiration
Mr.
Wormwood was based on a real-life character from Roald Dahl's home village of Great
Missenden in Buckinghamshire.[8] The library in Great Missenden was the inspiration for
Mrs. Phelps' library, where Matilda devours classic literature by the age
of four and three months.[9]
Adaptations
Matilda the Musical has been performed at the Cambridge
Theatre in the West
End since November 2011. Pictured in
July 2016.
The
novel was made into the film Matilda
in 1996. It starred Mara Wilson
as Matilda, and was directed by Danny
DeVito, who also portrayed Mr. Wormwood
and narrated the story. Although the film was not a box office success, it received
critical acclaim at the time of its release, and on Rotten
Tomatoes has a score of 90% based on reviews
from 21 critics.[10]
In
1990, the Redgrave Theatre in Farnham
produced a musical version, adapted by Rony Robinson with music by Ken Howard
and Alan Blaikley,
which toured the UK. It starred Annabelle Lanyon as Matilda and Jonathan
Linsley as Miss Trunchbull, and had mixed
reviews.[11] A second musical version of the novel, Matilda the Musical, written by Dennis
Kelly and Tim
Minchin and commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company, premiered in November 2010. It opened at the Cambridge
Theatre in the West
End on 24 November 2011.[1][12] It opened on Broadway on 11 April 2013 at the Shubert Theatre. The musical has since done a US tour and opened in July
2015 in Australia. The stage version has become hugely popular with audiences
and praised by critics, and won multiple Olivier
Awards in the UK and Tony
Awards in the US.[13] One critic called it "the best British musical since Billy Elliot".[2]
The
actress Kate Winslet
provides the English-language audiobook recording of Matilda.[3] In 2014, the American Library Association shortlisted her for an Odyssey
Award for her audiobook performance.[14]
On
27 November 2018, Netflix
was revealed to be adapting Matilda as an animated series, which will be
part of an "animated event series" along with other Roald Dahl books
such as The
BFG, The
Twits, and Charlie and the
Chocolate Factory.[15]
Connections to other Roald Dahl books
One
of Miss Trunchbull's punishments is to force an overweight child, Bruce
Bogtrotter, to eat an enormous chocolate cake, which makes him so full that he
cannot move. He had been found guilty of stealing cake from the kitchen. In Roald
Dahl's Revolting Recipes one of the recipes is based on that cake; whereas
Bruce is a more sympathetic variation of Augustus Gloop (from Charlie and
the Chocolate Factory) and similar gluttons, and made something of a hero
by finishing the cake without suffering nausea.[16] The short story The
Magic Finger by Roald Dahl, released in 1964,
may have been a precursor to Matilda. A young girl has power within her
finger to do things to other people when she gets emotional about a cause she
feels strongly about.[17]
Matilda at 30
Celebrating
30 years of the book's publication in October 2018, original illustrator
Quentin Blake imagined what Matilda might be doing as a grown up woman today.
He drew images of her undertaking various possible roles, including an
explorer, an astrophysicist, running the British
Library, and others.[17] While stating it would be nice to know what Matilda would
do as a woman, author Cressida
Cowell states, "Why does a part of us
not want to know what Matilda has become? Somewhere in our heart of hearts we
never want Matilda to grow up – we want her to be like Peter
Pan, eternally young."[17]
References
·
Serena Allott (26 November 2010) Waltzing
Matilda: Dahl's classic dances on to the stage The Daily Telegraph
· · "Once
upon a time, there was a man who liked to make up stories ..." The
Independent (Sunday, 12 December 2010)
· · "Roald
Dahl's Matilda Audio CD - read by Kate Winslet". Roald Dahl.com. 20 May 2016. Archived from the
original on 8 July 2018. Retrieved 20 May
2016.
·
"Episode
1, Matilda, Classic Serial - BBC Radio 4". BBC. Retrieved 4
June 2016.
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