Agatha Bulstronk

Agatha Bulstronk is the headmistress whose authority at Matilda’s School is marked by violence and fear. The revelation that she is also Miss Honey’s aunt turns that public cruelty into part of a longer history: Miss Honey says Bulstronk raised her after her father died and describes abuse that began when she was a very young child. Later, when chalk writes a message on the blackboard naming Agatha and Marcus, Bulstronk is left unconscious. She recovers, marches out of the school, and is absent the next day.

Identity and Background

Bulstronk holds the position of headmistress, referred to by the children as the Head. Matilda already knows her as a figure capable of startling physical violence: she reminds Miss Honey that they recently saw Bulstronk seize a girl by her braids and sling her over a fence. The episode gives concrete meaning to Matilda’s astonishment when she learns that this same woman is Miss Honey’s aunt. Matilda asks whether Bulstronk raised her; Miss Honey confirms that she did.

That family connection changes the scale of what is known about Bulstronk. Her conduct toward children at school is not an isolated display witnessed by Matilda, but part of a pattern that Miss Honey locates in her own childhood. The account does not offer a full biography or explain Bulstrunk’s motives; it establishes instead the contrast between her institutional power and the vulnerability of the child she once controlled.

Miss Honey’s Account of Her Aunt

Miss Honey places the beginning of her ordeal after her father’s death, when she was five and a half. Bulstrunk made the child bathe alone. If she came upstairs and judged that Miss Honey had not washed properly, she held Miss Honey’s head underwater until she was almost suffocated. The threat is described through a specific routine: an ordinary bath became a test controlled by the aunt, with near-drowning as punishment for failing to satisfy her judgment.

Miss Honey declines to recount the rest of what Bulstrunk did, saying that there is no point in beginning the list. Her refusal limits the details available, but also makes clear that the bath incident was not presented as the only abuse. Matilda accepts that there is no benefit in continuing the account. Miss Honey then redirects the conversation, noting that they had come to talk about Matilda and that she has spent too long talking about herself. Her shift back to Matilda’s abilities leaves the disclosure starkly bounded: Bulstrunk’s past cruelty is acknowledged, but not exhaustively narrated.

The Blackboard and Bulstrunk’s Collapse

In a later classroom episode, Bulstrunk sees her first name appear on the blackboard in writing made by an unseen hand. Deeply shocked, she drops Wilfred onto the floor and cries out, asking who is writing. The chalk continues moving. Its message identifies Agatha and Marcus, turning the headmistress’s own name into the center of an inexplicable public encounter. The writing then warns that Marcus is watching her.

When the chalk stops, it remains suspended briefly before falling with a clatter and breaking in two on the floor. Wilfred, who has returned to his seat in the front row, calls out that Miss Bulstrunk has fallen. The children rise to see for themselves: Bulstrunk lies on her back, unconscious. The sequence places the chalk’s message, her shock, and her collapse in immediate succession, while leaving the exact mechanism of her fall unstated. For the class, the spectacle is intensely exciting; for Bulstrunk, the episode briefly reverses the usual arrangement in which she commands the room and the children bear the consequences of her actions.

Departure and Aftermath

Later that day, word spreads through the school that Bulstrunk has regained consciousness and marched out, pale and with her lips pressed tightly together. The account emphasizes her exit rather than any explanation she gives: she leaves without speaking in the reported scene. The next morning she does not come to school. At midday, the acting headteacher calls her home to ask whether she is ill, but receives no answer. After school, he sets out to investigate at Het Rode Huis, the brick country house in the woods beyond the hills where Bulstrunk lives.

These events establish her departure from the school and the first signs that her absence is more than a single day away. They do not yet disclose what has happened at her home. By ending with the unanswered call and the acting headteacher’s visit, the narrative leaves Bulstrunk’s immediate fate unresolved while shifting attention from her rule in the classroom to the empty place she has left behind.