Lavender

Lavender is Matilda’s close school friend at Pletze Basisschool, a notably small, daring girl whose wish to prove herself leads her to place a salamander in Miss Trunchbull’s water jug. Her prank briefly turns the school’s fearsome authority figure into the frightened one, giving Lavender a moment of audacity that grows out of her admiration for other children’s courage and her careful use of an ordinary classroom duty.

Identity and Friendship

Lavender is described as unusually small for her age: thin, with deep brown eyes, dark hair, and a fringe across her forehead. She and Matilda begin walking together during breaks and at lunchtime from the first day of school. Their affection is mutual and rests on a shared quality: each likes the other’s bravery and adventurousness. Lavender is not merely a companion who watches Matilda’s unusual abilities from the sidelines; she becomes a friend with her own appetite for daring action.

The other children know Matilda is exceptionally clever because they witnessed Miss Honey question her on the first day. They also know she is allowed to read quietly during lessons rather than pay attention in the usual way. Lavender is among those classmates, but the account gives her a distinct response to the difference between Matilda and the rest of them. When Matilda demonstrates that a calculating machine is no more than a lump of metal beside her own ability, Lavender protests that it is unfair that Matilda can do this while the others cannot. Miss Honey reassures her that she will soon catch up, although the reassurance is explicitly a lie. Lavender’s objection registers the gap between Matilda’s exceptional gift and the ordinary children around her, even as their friendship remains intact.

Learning the School’s Climate

Before Lavender and the other new pupils have completed their first week, frightening stories about Miss Trunchbull, the Headmistress, reach them. Miss Honey warns the class to wear clean clothes and keep their faces and hands clean, to speak only when asked, and to stand when answering. She tells them not to argue, contradict the Headmistress, or make jokes, because Miss Trunchbull becomes angry and the consequences are dangerous. Lavender’s dry, understated response signals that the warning confirms what she has heard rather than surprising her.

Miss Honey also prepares the children for a recitation of the two-times table and a spelling test. She explains that a jug of water and a glass must be waiting on the table whenever Miss Trunchbull enters. Lavender immediately volunteers for the task. The duty is mundane, but in a school where the Headmistress’s rules make even speech risky, access to the jug gives Lavender a chance to act. She promises not to forget it, while already considering what the assignment might make possible.

Planning the Prank

Lavender’s ambition is shaped by examples. She admires Hortensia for her daring exploits and Matilda for the secret stories Matilda has told her about the parrot trick and the hair-oil switch that turned her father’s hair blond. Lavender wants her own chance to be heroic, but the account emphasizes that she must devise a brilliant plan and keep it completely secret if she is to get through it safely. On the way home she considers different possibilities and develops her idea with the deliberate care of a general preparing for battle. Miss Trunchbull, in the schoolchildren’s estimation, is no less formidable an opponent than Napoleon.

The setting for Lavender’s plan is close at hand: a muddy pond at the back of her garden, where salamanders live. The animal described is shy and seldom seen by ordinary people, about fifteen centimetres long, slimy, gray-green above and orange underneath. Its blunt head makes it resemble a baby crocodile, though it is entirely harmless. That contrast matters to the prank: the salamander poses no real danger, but its unfamiliar, unsettling appearance can provoke alarm. Lavender’s scheme depends on the gap between what the creature is and what a startled observer might imagine it to be.

Carrying Out the Plan

On the morning of the prank, Lavender cannot eat at lunchtime. When Miss Honey asks if she feels unwell, she claims to have eaten so much at breakfast that she cannot manage another bite. As soon as lunch is over, she runs to the kitchen and takes one of the Headmistress’s large, lumpy, blue-glazed earthenware jugs. She fills it only halfway, carries it with a glass to the classroom, and sets it on the table while the room is still empty.

Working quickly, Lavender takes the pencil case from her bag and opens its lid just enough to expose the salamander inside. She holds the case above the jug, opens it farther, and tips the animal into the water. It splashes and thrashes briefly before settling. Lavender also adds the water plants from the pencil case so the salamander will feel more at home. She returns her pens and pencils to the now rather damp case, puts it back on her desk, and goes outside to join the other children. The careful preparation and apparently ordinary errand conceal the act in plain sight: the jug is ready for its usual purpose, but its contents have been changed.

The Prank’s Effect and Lavender’s Role

When Miss Trunchbull pours water from the jug into her glass, the salamander slides out with it. The Headmistress screams and jumps up as if something had exploded beneath her chair. The children see the strange animal writhing in the glass and begin shouting in alarm, mistaking it for a snake, a baby crocodile, or a little dragon. Lavender calls out that Miss Trunchbull should look out because it might bite. The warning heightens the moment without making the harmless creature genuinely dangerous.

Miss Trunchbull is especially furious because someone has managed to frighten her into leaping and screaming, contradicting her own reputation for fearing nothing. She has never seen a salamander and does not recognize it; biology is not her strong subject. Once she sits again, her small black eyes burn with hatred and rage, and she calls Matilda to stand. The prank therefore does not end the Headmistress’s power or remove the danger facing the children. Its immediate consequence is a brief reversal: the person who enforces fear has herself been startled, while Lavender has successfully performed the daring act she had been planning.

Lavender’s importance lies in this movement from companion to instigator. She notices the unfairness surrounding Matilda’s gift, learns how tightly Miss Trunchbull controls the classroom, and turns a routine responsibility into an opportunity for resistance. Her courage is not presented as carelessness: she studies the possibilities, plans secretly, and uses a harmless animal whose frightening appearance supplies the shock. In a school where children are repeatedly warned to obey, Lavender’s small, concealed intervention makes ingenuity another form of defiance.