History Headscratchers / Matilda

[[folder: The 1996 movie]]

* The kids not only [[spoiler: pelt the Trunchbull with food, but with WATER BALLOONS. Considering the way Crunchem Hall is run, how and why would they have water balloons on their person at the time?]]
** [[spoiler: Perhaps every kid in school is looking for a chance to prank the Trunchbull?]]

** [[spoiler: The balloons are probably a consequence of the warlike environment of the school - as explained above. The water, however, as well as how the kids got such a supply on such short notice, has a very simple [[UrineTrouble alternative explanation]].]]

** TwoTeacherSchool? Though, since, according to the epilogue [[spoiler: Miss Honey extended it into an ElevatorSchool as principal]], they do have other teachers but we don't see them because they're not the focus.

** Who knows, since she's Miss Honey's [[spoiler: abusive aunt]], maybe she terrorized the parents, too? The kids are supposed to be 6-7, she's implied to be in her late 40s-early 50s, and the fact she's TheDreaded, this wouldn't be impossible.

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** Allegedly, there ''was'' a version of the book's ending where the Trunchbull runs screaming from the classroom and straight into the arms of the police, where she's taken away in handcuffs while the children jeer from the windows. It's unclear why Dahl rejected this more realistic ending, though it's possible it was less empowering or satisfying than allowing Matilda to defeat her singlehandedly. But you're not the only person to think the Trunchbull got off too lightly: at least one stage adaptation includes [[FixFic an epilogue]] stating that the Trunchbull was arrested when she accidentally admitted to murder while reporting that she was being haunted.

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[[AC: 1996 Movie]]

[[AC: The Musical]]

* We're strongly set up to believe that Matilda's story is based on a fantasy about her own life because we hear her parents throw out the words 'escapologist' and 'acrobat' before she seemingly creates characters with those names. It's odd, though, as 'escapologist' seems an incredibly unlikely word to come from the mouth of her knowledge-hating father. Later, the eventual reveal shows that Matilda's story is nothing to do with her parents and is something she was picking up from elsewhere via psychic powers. Truly bizarre coincidence on top of highly unlikely word choice? A sign that Matilda's powers were affecting her parents? Or a sign that they might have some dormant powers of their own?

*** Which can serve as FridgeHorror of its own, seeing that the Wormwoods got most likely arrested in Guam, ending with Michael in an orphanage, on the street or similar. While he had been a lazy bully, he was mostly victim of being ''groomed'' into one, just to end up suffering for his parents deeds and not having been HappilyAdopted like Matilda.

** I suppose Matilda's first act of standing up to the Trunchbull when she was abusing Bruce helped light a fire under all the other students. Lavender for example puts the newt in the Trunchbull's water as revenge for locking Matilda in the Chokey. Likewise Miss Honey was compelled to break Matilda out against the Trunchbull's wishes. Matilda had stood up to her in the assembly and that prompted them to do the same. So it's possible the kids may have been looking for opportunities to get back at her too.
** The answer might be found in the book, where the students ''do'' prank Trunchbull when they can. It's treated as a war -- Trunchbull tries to oppress them and they fight back in the ways they can. This is most clearly showed in the book's scene where Hortensia is telling Matilda and Lavender about life at Crunchem Hall -- where Hortensia in the movie just talks about the hellish nature of the school, book-Hortensia brags about the pranks she's played on Trunchbull. Though the kids in the movie seems a lot more cowed and oppressed, it's possible they ''do'' occasionally try to fight back with pulling pranks like their book counterparts.

** Possibly they sensed something was going down when the Trunchbull was being terrorised in Matilda's class (she does get thrown around a lot, which is bound to make some noise) and they filled some of them up with water from the tap. Miss Honey's classroom has a sink in it, since that's where Lavender fills the jug before she pulls the prank with the newt, so the other rooms might have them too and they could fill up without having to leave the room.

** ValuesDissonance. Back when the book was first written - or [[WriteWhatYouKnow from the author's childhood]]. Schools could probably pull stunts like that back in Dahl's day. For the "five hours late" stunt, maybe the Trunchbull called the parents and said that their children had "misbehaved and were in detention"... For all we know, the parents had the options of taking their kids home. We just know Matilda came home five hours late because her own parents are ''that'' careless.
* In the same year the film came out, a first-grader named Jonathan Prevette was disciplined for kissing a classmate, which caused his mother to stage protests against the school district board, and ultimately sparked a public debate on the role schools should play in penalizing misbehaving students (and whether or not his actions constituted sexual harassment in the first place). Therefore even as far back as 1996, there were overprotective parents who have a propensity of taking action based on what their children say or what they interpret, regardless of their plausibility. Ms. Trunchbull would most likely have immediately been protested and investigated by her superiors as soon as she mistreated a student who had parents like that, instead of being able to cow the entire school into silence because no-one was listening to them, or took them seriously.
** As for bruised and beaten, there are plenty of real life cases where children are bullied but the parents never find out. Children get into all sorts of scrapes, so a line about falling in the playground seems much more believable than [[WeirdnessCensor getting thrown over the fence by the school's evil principal]].

** She literally tells Harry that she has a tight budget.
** Plus, well, kids-lit logic. Children's literature, especially that of the fantastical sort which Roald Dahl traded in, often tends to exaggerate stuff in order to make the story more interesting and exciting. After-school detention is a common punishment experienced by children, so Dahl ups the ante and really illustrates what an utter bastard Trunchbull is by having her keep the kids back what is almost an entire school day on ''top'' of their existing school day.
* If Miss Trunchbull hadn't happened along and offered to enrol Matilda as a barter for her car, when would Matilda have gotten to go to school?
* When Matilda uses her mental powers to trick the Trunchbull into believing that her house had been haunted by Magnus in an attempt to retrieve Miss Honey's doll and two chocolates, she uses them to take Trunchbull's Olympics portrait into the fireplace and then put Magnus' portrait in its place, much to the Trunchball's dismay. By looking on her face, it's obvious that the Trunchbull loved her portrait but that she also anticipated its impending fate, so why she didn't run fast to rescue it from the "ghost" when she could have done it?
** Well, the Trunchbull was quite scared over the situation, as papers were send flying by the wind and the windows were opening and closing. When one is scared, he/she doesn't have much time to consider what's going to happen later on, so perhaps the Trunchbull thought at the possibility that the ghost would use her portrait to hit her with it.

* Anyone else think Trunchbull got off too easy? Considering she's implied to have murdered Magnus I think it would be better if she had died at the end (maybe having a fatal heart attack out of fear due to the "supernatural" stuff since it's been shown that for all her anger and cruelty [[DirtyCoward she's really a coward at heart]] or committing suicide for fearing that Magnus' ghost would come back for her).
** Maybe, but this ''is'' still a story for kids. Even for Roald Dahl, there's a limit to exactly how dark he can go in punishing his villains, especially for human villain in a comparatively more grounded story like ''Matilda''. His villains that meet a particularly sticky end either tend to be actual monsters (like the Witches) or meet an end that is clearly absurd and over-the-top (like the Twits "disappearing" after spending too long standing on their heads). A heart attack or suicide would almost certainly be too "real" for what is, at the end of the day, a children's book.

** If you think about it, she wasn't just scared out of the school. She lost her job, her house and presumably any credibility if she went around claiming she was being attacked by ghosts. She's either been DrivenToMadness or left destitute. She may also have to live in fear for the rest of her life that Magnus's ghost could come at her again to punish her. Or more mundanely, once there was no fear of her retaliation, Miss Honey reported her to the proper authorities to make sure she was taken away.

** A) She's an incredibly wicked woman who does this sort of thing to students as punishment for the slightest offences such as eating candy in class. B) She's well and truly lost her mind over apparently being haunted by the ghost of Magnus. C) She's used to being all powerful and untouchable, and now that power is slipping away from her, so throwing him out the window might have been a vain effort to regain control.

* Why doesn't Ms. Honey just call the cops if Trunchbull is openly doing horrible things to kids? She's an adult so presumably, people will believe her. Is the implication supposed to be that Trunchbull is [[TheDreaded so scary]] that [PoliceAreUseless the cops won't do anything.]]

** [[FridgeLogic And yet she has to buy a used car from a HonestJohnsDealership, and most of the house is being used as storage]]. If you're always hearing that teachers are underpaid, it stands to reason that principals (even superintendents) don't earn much more.

* What would have happened if Matilda hadn't saved the kid who was thrown out the window?

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** If his parents were arrested, he would most certainly not end up on the street. He'd be put into foster care and he might end up in a better family, who could even raise him into being a better person.