Matilda repeats the telekinetic feat for juffrouw Engel

Matilda repeats the telekinetic feat for Juffrouw Engel in a quiet classroom after the other children have gone outside. The demonstration turns an extraordinary, privately experienced power into something another person can witness: Matilda confesses that she made the earlier glass fall, then does it again before Juffrouw Engel’s astonished eyes. The scene establishes both the reach of Matilda’s ability and the trust she places in the one adult she believes might understand it.

The need to tell someone

After the class empties, Matilda remains at her desk, silently considering what happened to the glass. She knows she must tell someone; the incident feels too remarkable to keep to herself. She wants an adult who is both wise and kind, someone who can help her make sense of the event, and concludes that her parents are unsuitable confidants. Even if they believed her account, she doubts they would grasp how extraordinary it was. She chooses Juffrouw Engel instead.

The two are alone in the classroom. Juffrouw Engel is looking through papers at her desk when she notices Matilda has not gone out to play and invites her to speak. Matilda directs the conversation to the glass of water containing the salamander and asks whether Juffrouw Engel saw it splash over Miss Trunchbull. This concrete reminder ties the private conversation to the public classroom disturbance: Matilda does not begin with a general claim about unusual powers, but with the specific incident that has been troubling her.

From denial to confession

Matilda insists that she did not touch the glass and was not even near it. Juffrouw Engel confirms that she knows this, recalling that she had told Miss Trunchbull Matilda could not have caused the fall. Matilda then makes the crucial distinction: she did cause it, but not by touching it. She explains that anger at being accused of something she had not physically done made her bring about the fall. Her earlier denial and her confession are therefore compatible within her account; the difference is between contact and agency.

Matilda describes staring at the glass and wishing it would topple. Her eyes became hot and strange, she felt a force shoot out, and the glass fell. Juffrouw Engel studies her through her steel-rimmed glasses and tries to understand what Matilda means, asking whether she moved the glass through the power of her will. Her response holds belief and uncertainty together: she recognizes the possibility as an immense wonder, yet suspects that young children can have fantasies and decides to let Matilda demonstrate it gently rather than simply accept or dismiss the claim.

The second demonstration

Juffrouw Engel places the now-empty glass in the middle of the table and asks whether Matilda can do it again. Matilda is unsure, but thinks she can. The empty glass matters to the test as it is presented: this is not the earlier glass full of water and containing the salamander, but the same kind of ordinary object, set out for a deliberate repeat.

Matilda sits in the second row, about three metres from Juffrouw Engel. With her elbows on her desk and her head in her hands, she begins at once. She gives the glass a silent command in her mind; her lips do not move, and she makes no sound. She concentrates her mind, brain, and will upon her eyes. This time the power comes more quickly. She feels its charge build and her eyes grow hotter, then directs the force toward the glass. It wobbles, tilts to one side, and falls with a clink onto the tabletop, less than thirty centimetres from Juffrouw Engel’s crossed arms.

The method makes the repetition more than a second unexplained accident. Matilda deliberately focuses, issues a mental command, and produces a sequence of visible movements ending in the glass’s fall. The distance, silence, and precise placement are all part of the witnessed event. Although Matilda describes the force through bodily sensations and the image of invisible arms, the glass’s movement supplies Juffrouw Engel with the evidence she had asked for.

Witness, shock, and reassurance

Juffrouw Engel’s reaction is immediate and physical. Her mouth falls open; her eyes widen until the whites show around her pupils. She cannot speak. She stares at the glass and leans as far back in her chair as she can, as if the object has become dangerous. The response marks a sharp change in the scene: Juffrouw Engel had approached Matilda’s claim as a possible childhood fantasy, but now she has watched the glass move herself.

Her attention soon shifts from the fallen glass to Matilda. The child has gone very pale and is trembling, staring ahead with unfocused, glassy eyes. Her face has changed, and her eyes appear large, bright, and still; the narration gives her a quiet radiance. Juffrouw Engel waits and trembles too, watching Matilda slowly return to herself. When Matilda says she is all right and asks Juffrouw Engel not to worry, the teacher, still deeply affected, tells her that she seemed very far away.

The demonstration thus verifies Matilda’s power for another person while also showing its cost in the moment: after concentrating so intensely, Matilda appears distant and physically shaken. It changes the basis of her relationship with Juffrouw Engel from a child’s need to confide in a trusted adult to a shared knowledge grounded in direct observation. The event does not explain the origin of the ability, but it establishes that Matilda can reproduce the glass’s movement intentionally, in silence, and under Juffrouw Engel’s watch.