Why Matilda Is Still a Relevant Story

Roald Dahl is perhaps one of the most well known children’s authors of all time. He wrote hits such as Charlie and Chocolate Factory, James and The Giant Peach, the BFG, and– my personal favorite– Matilda. 

Matilda follows the story of a brilliant young girl whose parents despise her for her mere existence. She teaches herself everything: how to read, cook, navigate, and how to be kind. She is curious, but more than that, she is brave, and that bravery is what drives the story to its epic conclusion featuring her terrible parents and awful headmistress getting what they deserve while she gets her own happily ever after. 

And while Matilda is not as old as some books, such as Little Women, or Romeo and Juliet, it is a timeless story with heart that has lasted for generations– and had several movie adaptations and a musical. 

Reading Matilda for the first time since I was a child, I was struck with how simple the prose is. It is written with young children in mind, but I think anyone can pick up the book and find depth between the lines. The chapters are set up in short story format: every chapter is a serial snippet of the larger story, reminding me of a television series. 

Growing up, my mother always advised me not to read Roald Dahl. She told me that they were dark, twisted tales. But they had nothing terrible in them, and eventually she realized I was running out of books at the library to read, so Roald Dahl was a better alternative than reading The Hunger Games at age eleven. Rereading Matilda I see why this author is such a threat. It is not that there is anything bad in the books he writes, but there is always a villain, and that villain is always an adult. 

In Matilda, her villain comes as her own parents, people who hold her back. She quickly frees herself from most of the things they do. When they force her into doing things she hates, she finds a way to get even with them. She is a master at artful revenge. The real problem, then, is a problem with her headmistress, who is a bully to Matilda, to her friends, and to her teacher, Miss Honey, who just happens to be her niece. These adults are painted as ugly inside and out, and Matilda is painted as a near-perfect girl who is only trying her best in this world. I can see how any adults reading this might have a problem with the fact that their child is reading a book in which the adults are the villains and children the victims; after all, aren’t children nuisances anyway? Aren’t Matilda’s parents right? 

The reason I am seeing a resurgence in Matilda and in her bravery is because many of my friends are suffering from the same villainous acts of mutiny Miss Trunchbull and Matilda’s parents frequently act upon. I am seeing a drought in good parenting, where we are all Matildas and Miss Honeys, and our parents are just as terrible (and worse) than the cartoonish depictions we find in Matilda. 

But surely this similarity is not the only reason Matilda is a success. 

This book captures the essence of a nerdy parentified daughter searching for her place in the world. Matilda is an outcast in her family, which means she must turn to her books and to the few friends she has. While she is kind to her classmates, she really is just searching for someone kind and motherly to befriend, which she finds in her kindly teacher, Miss Honey. 

Oftentimes neglected children need another adult to cling to, especially one who is drastically different from the household they grew up in. Miss Honey is the exact opposite of Matilda’s mother, who says Matilda is a waste of space. Miss Honey sees Matilda’s true potential, and makes sure that Matilda sees it, too. Because of this, Matilda is able to truly thrive for the first time, feeling anger, sadness, and joy in ways she has never before had the freedom or capacity to feel. When Matilda starts living instead of surviving, the book takes a magical turn, and even the adults have no power over Matilda’s wild actions. 

Matilda is nothing but sweet at the beginning of the book, but when she begins acting out, the readers are not told that she is a “bad child.” Instead she is intelligent, daring, and witty. Her pranks are well-thought-out, and her ability to navigate complicated situations is not seen as sneaky, but admirable. This narrative flips every adult’s point of view on its side and reminds us that there are two sides to every story, and that not every perfect family, perfect girl, or perfect parent is ever really as they seem. No one in this story is perfect, but that is the point. Matilda is not a Beth March or a Sara Crewe, she is her own self, with flaws and stubbornness and a beautiful honesty that many stories lack. If there is one thing you can count on, it is that Roald Dahl will tell it how it is. And the truth: it’s messy, twisted, and layered. 

Matilda tells the story of a girl who is extraordinary, but ordinary things happen to her. Yes, she can move things with her mind, but she still has adults breathing down her neck asking her to be quieter, to shrink down into a mite instead of being the bold and beautiful girl she is. Because Matilda refuses to shrink, we are intrigued. Because she is ordinary, we feel akin to her. 

Because she does not give up, we realize we must also continue on. 

Matilda has magical and illogical parts to a story– parts that I struggle to cope with as an aspiring fiction writer– but I also realize that this is a reason we are drawn to the story: because it is imperfect, because not everything is explained away. Matilda is magic, but she is an ordinary girl. She is strong, but she still needs safety. We cling to Matilda because she is like us, and we are like her: capable of magic beyond our knowledge and more like our peers than we like to admit. We love Matilda because she does what we cannot: move the world to be a little kinder. 

Written by, Adelaide Laurence