Matilda Wurmhout—Agatha Bulstronk

Matilda Wormwood and Miss Trunchbull’s relationship is an escalating contest between a child who is repeatedly judged without evidence and a headmistress who wields school authority as intimidation. Miss Trunchbull’s first impressions of Matilda come from Mr. Wormwood, whom she initially praises as a respected member of the community; Matilda’s intelligence and her capacity to act against injustice later unsettle that borrowed certainty. When Miss Trunchbull unjustly blames Matilda for the salamander incident, Matilda’s anger becomes the occasion for a startling reversal: using her eyes, she tips a glass of water onto the headmistress, then calmly denies having moved from her place.

An Adversarial Relationship Before They Meet

Miss Trunchbull forms an opinion of Matilda before she has even seen her. When Miss Honey begins to introduce the child, the headmistress identifies her as the daughter of the owner of Wormwood’s garage and describes Mr. Wormwood as a community pillar. She has recently bought a nearly new car from him, which he represented as a bargain with low mileage and a little-used previous owner. On his account, however, Matilda is already a bad child who should be watched, and he has warned that any trouble at school would be her doing. Miss Trunchbull accepts this judgment as a reliable guide, even though she admits she has not met Matilda.

That readiness to prejudge her is reinforced by Miss Trunchbull’s broader contempt for girls she considers troublesome. She speculates that Matilda must be a rotten little creature and generalizes that bad girls are more dangerous than bad boys and harder to tame. Her language turns a child she has never encountered into a type deserving punishment. She also suspects Matilda of placing a stink bomb beneath her desk, without establishing that she did so, and promises retaliation. The relationship thus begins not with an exchange between teacher and pupil but with a verdict: Mr. Wormwood’s account gives Miss Trunchbull a ready-made explanation for misconduct, and suspicion supplies the rest.

Miss Honey’s Advocacy and Miss Trunchbull’s Refusal

Miss Honey tries to replace that inherited accusation with evidence of Matilda’s ability. She asks to explain what happened in class and insists that Matilda is a genius. Miss Trunchbull answers with ridicule rather than curiosity, treating the idea of a gifted child as nonsense and repeating that Matilda’s father has identified her as a criminal. Miss Honey’s account of Matilda’s intelligence therefore confronts not merely disbelief but a prior story Miss Trunchbull has chosen to trust.

The disagreement becomes concrete when Miss Honey proposes moving Matilda immediately from her class to the highest class, whose pupils are eleven. Miss Trunchbull interprets this as an attempt to get rid of a difficult pupil and transfer the problem to the older class’s teacher. Miss Honey denies that this is her purpose, but the headmistress ends the discussion: Matilda will stay where she is, and Miss Honey must make her behave. Miss Trunchbull invokes the school’s rule that children remain in the group for their age, regardless of how good or bad they are, and objects to placing a five-year-old among the older pupils. In the exchange, a policy of age-based placement becomes a means of closing off Miss Honey’s case for Matilda; the child’s educational needs are subordinated to the headmistress’s suspicion of the teacher’s motives.

Suspicion Turns into Personal Hostility

When Miss Trunchbull later addresses Matilda in class, her view of the family has changed for a reason of her own. The car she bought from Mr. Wormwood has broken down in the village, its engine full of sawdust. She now calls him a cheat and a thief, declaring that she will make him pay. But this new anger does not lead her to reconsider the judgment she accepted from him about his daughter. Instead, she uses the conflict with Mr. Wormwood to sharpen her hostility toward Matilda.

Matilda describes her father as skilled at his work. Miss Trunchbull rejects the praise and links Matilda’s supposed cleverness to distrust: Miss Honey has told her that Matilda is clever too, and, in her view, clever people cannot be trusted. She says that Mr. Wormwood had also described Matilda’s misbehavior at home and announces that she will watch the girl closely. The pattern is revealing: Miss Trunchbull can reverse her opinion of Mr. Wormwood when the car exposes his dishonesty, yet she continues to use his earlier accusations against Matilda. Her suspicion is not a careful conclusion about the child; it is a weapon that persists even as its original source loses credibility.

The Salamander and the Contest over Blame

The conflict reaches its sharpest point after the salamander is found in the glass of water. Miss Trunchbull summons Matilda and immediately treats her as responsible, though Matilda has not left her place. She insults her, says that the school is too good for her, threatens to have older pupils drive her out with hockey sticks, and predicts that she will be sent to a reformatory for delinquent girls for at least forty years. When Matilda tries to protest, Miss Trunchbull threatens to take off her belt and beat her with its buckle end. Matilda sits down, overwhelmed by the unfairness of being threatened with expulsion for something she did not do.

The accusation matters because it repeats the relationship’s founding logic in a more coercive form. At first, Miss Trunchbull accepts Mr. Wormwood’s unsupported claim that Matilda is behind any trouble. Now she treats Matilda as guilty of the salamander incident without evidence of her involvement. Matilda’s anger grows as she watches the animal struggle in the glass and imagines tipping the water onto the headmistress. The desire is not a plan she can carry out by ordinary movement: she is afraid of what Miss Trunchbull would do if she tried. The scene places the child’s sense of injustice beside the physical threat of the adult who controls the classroom.

A Reversal of Power, Not a Reconciliation

As Matilda fixes her eyes on the glass, she experiences a force gathering in them and directs it toward the vessel. It rocks, pauses, then gradually tilts until it falls. Water and salamander spill across Miss Trunchbull’s chest; the headmistress leaps up screaming, and the animal clings to her clothing. Matilda has caused the fall through telekinetic power, but Miss Trunchbull turns at once to accuse her. Matilda stays seated and says calmly that she has not moved from the beginning of the lesson. The class supports her, insisting that she did not move and that Miss Trunchbull must have knocked the glass over herself.

For a moment, the authority that has defined Matilda as a liar and culprit cannot make the accusation stick with the witnesses in the room. Matilda’s denial is restrained rather than triumphant; the decisive change is in her own assurance. After tipping the glass with the power of her eyes, she feels that she is afraid of no one. The incident does not establish a reconciliation, nor does the evidence show Miss Trunchbull accepting Matilda’s account. Instead, it exposes the limits of the headmistress’s control: her threats can silence Matilda temporarily, but they cannot make the child’s innocence into guilt or prevent Matilda from discovering a power that can answer her violence. Their relationship remains profoundly unequal, yet the salamander scene gives Matilda a new form of agency within it.