Matilda Case

Awa Fofana

Matilda is one of my all-time favorite child hood movies.  In a quick summary, the movie Matilda is about a young, bright girl, who was born into a not-so-bright family. In order to cope with the neglect from her family, at a young age she found joy in the library. Matilda then enrolled in a wretched school with a horrible principal, Ms. Trunchbull, who clearly despises children. Fortunately, within the bad school Matilda finds support from her teacher, Miss Honey. As the story goes along, Matilda discovers that she has telekinetic powers. It is not until Miss Honey shows her kindness for the first time does she realize that she can use those powers to do something about her sufferings and to help her friends as well. In the end, Matilda gets away from her unsupportive, mean family and is adopted by Miss Honey. Aside from the good plot, this movie portrays many of the family structures and the parenting styles learned in class.

When we meet Matilda, she is four years old and is left at home every day for several hours with no supervision. Her parents Mr. and Mrs. Wormwood show uninvolved parenting characteristics all throughout the movie. The Wormwoods are wrapped up in their own silly lives that they barely noticed they even had a daughter. As learned in lecture uninvolved parents have low acceptance, low involvement, low control, and are indifferent with their autonomy.

Most parents believe their children are the best thing that has ever happened to them, others take a less emotional approach. This was the case with Matilda’s parents. From the moment she was born they didn’t like her at all. We see that her parents are uninvolved as they leave Matilda alone all day, and even enroll her in school late because it is more important for Matilda to retrieve packages at home. Matilda is very different from her family, and because of this she is not at all accepted. Her mother wishes Matilda was more like her, and calls her a “dumb kid”. Matilda enjoys reading and learns a lot about life through books. With no support from her parents she was forced to learn life and social skills from books instead of her parents who are supposed to be her role models. Her family does not participate in educational activities, instead they watch TV and often Matilda is punished for wanting to read books instead of being engaged with her family. The only control her parents remotely enforced was trying to make Matilda watch TV during “family time”. Otherwise, her parents did not express any care or concern for her, in fact they would occasionally call her Melinda because they forgot her name.

In my opinion, the Wormwoods would be considered a low SES family. Although her dad runs his own business, he still sells faulty cars and steals parts. There are also many things in their house that are stolen as well. It is also very clear that Matilda’s mother nor father received a higher education.  Because Matilda was so bright her teacher paid a visit to her parents to convince them in considering Matilda to go to college early. It was already difficult for Miss Honey to make her parents pay attention to Matilda’s needs and yet they laughed at the idea of college. This is relevant because it was learned in lecture that often times in low SES families little is expected from their children. Mr. Wormwood taught his children how to be crooks rather than teaching them to be good citizens. Furthermore, in low SES families criticism and physical punishment is often evoked on children, and there were many examples of this shown in the movie. For example, Matilda’s father would often yell out things like, “I’m big you’re little so you’ll listen to me”. Whatever issues her father had he would often take it out on Matilda.