Juffrouw Engel escapes her aunt and moves into the cottage

Juffrouw Engel’s escape from her aunt and move into the cottage was a hard-won break from financial control and fear. After years of surrendering her earnings to Miss Trunchbull, she found a place of her own, gathered the courage to leave, and discovered that even a life with almost nothing could feel like freedom.

The salary arrangement

When Juffrouw Engel got her teaching job, Miss Trunchbull told her that the costs of raising her—food, clothes, and shoes—had left her owing thousands and thousands of pounds. She demanded that Juffrouw Engel repay the supposed debt by handing over her salary for ten years. Juffrouw Engel was allowed just one pound of pocket money a week, and Miss Trunchbull arranged for the school to pay the salary directly into her own bank account. She also made her niece sign a paper.

Matilda recognizes what the arrangement cost Juffrouw Engel: her salary could have been her chance at freedom. Juffrouw Engel agrees, but explains that she had been under her aunt’s power for nearly her whole life and did not have the courage to refuse. Even after becoming a teacher, she remained terrified of Miss Trunchbull, who could still hurt her deeply. The account makes the obstacle to leaving more than a shortage of money: the arrangement was backed by fear as well as control of her wages.

Finding a place of her own

Juffrouw Engel identifies her escape as her greatest triumph, achieved two years before she tells Matilda about it. She used to get up very early to walk while her aunt was still asleep. On one of those walks she discovered a small, empty cottage and traced its ownership to a farmer. Early risers, she notes, he was already milking his cows when she went to speak with him.

The farmer warned that the cottage was not fit to live in because it had nothing, not even running water. Juffrouw Engel nevertheless asked to rent it, explaining that she had fallen in love with it and was romantic. The rent was ten pence a week. She gave the farmer forty pence in advance for a month and thanked him. Her decision was practical as well as emotional: she secured the place before confronting her aunt, and paid the first month’s rent in advance. The cottage offered little comfort, but it gave her somewhere beyond Miss Trunchbull’s control to go.

Leaving her aunt

Telling Miss Trunchbull proved harder than finding the cottage. One evening, after preparing supper, Juffrouw Engel went upstairs and packed her few possessions into a cardboard box. She then went down and announced that she was leaving and had rented a house. The smallness of her luggage sharply contrasts with the magnitude of the change: she was taking little with her, but ending an arrangement that had governed both her earnings and her choices.

Miss Trunchbull erupted in anger and challenged how someone with only one pound a week could rent a house. Juffrouw Engel answered that she had managed it. When her aunt demanded to know how she would buy food, Juffrouw Engel said she would work that out and ran out through the front door. Her departure did not follow a negotiated settlement or her aunt’s permission. It became an escape when she acted despite the fear that had kept her compliant, and crossed the threshold before the threat of her aunt’s anger could draw her back.

Freedom and its cost

Matilda responds with delight that Juffrouw Engel finally has a cottage to herself and is free. Juffrouw Engel confirms that she was at last free, and says she cannot describe how wonderful it felt. The exchange sets the emotional result against the cottage’s material limitations: freedom arrives not as comfort or wealth but as the ability to live without her aunt directing her life.

Matilda asks whether Juffrouw Engel has really managed for the past two years on one pound a week. She has. After paying the ten-pence rent, she buys enough paraffin for her primus and lamp, along with milk, tea, bread, and margarine. She says she needs little else and has already mentioned that she eats extra at the school lunch. These particulars show what her independence entails: a narrow budget, basic supplies, and reliance on the meal at school, rather than an easy escape from poverty. Yet the terms of this life are now her own. In the story, the cottage is both a home and the material proof that Juffrouw Engel has turned a teaching wage once controlled by Miss Trunchbull into a route out of her aunt’s household.