Summary
Matilda returns home to an empty house, just as she hoped. She takes one of her father's cigars to her room to practice, setting it down on her dressing table and sitting ten feet away from it. She wills it to move and it does almost at once, rolling off the table. Feeling powerful, she decides to see if she can lift it up in the air. She concentrates hard, and eventually it lifts into the air for about ten seconds before falling down again.
Invigorated, she practices and practices and manages to get it to stay up for a full minute. Every day after school Matilda practices lifting the cigar. By Wednesday evening, she is able not only to lift it, but also to get it to move around in the air however she wants. She knows then that the time has come to put her plan to help Miss Honey into action.
The next day is Thursday, which is when Miss Trunchbull comes in to teach Miss Honey's class. Miss Honey warns them all to be especially careful today, after what happened last week when she took over. When Miss Trunchbull comes in, she first checks to see that there are no creatures in her water jug. She points to a boy named Wilfred and asks him to recite the three-times table backwards, and when he cannot, Miss Honey tells her that she sees no point in teaching them things backwards when the whole point of life is to go forwards.
Miss Trunchbull continues to torment Wilfred with difficult questions, and when he cannot answer she flips him and dangles him upside down. As she does, Nigel shrieks that the chalk on the blackboard is moving on its own. Everyone stares as the chalk begins to write something, starting with Miss Trunchbull's first name, Agatha. It continues to write, presumably a message also containing the names "Magnus" and "Jenny."
Miss Trunchbull begins to shriek, traumatized, and then faints dead away on the floor. Miss Honey sends someone to go fetch the nurse, and Nigel dumps the jug of water on Miss Trunchbull's face and she still does not wake up. Matilda, with her palms crossed and motionless at her desk, feels elated and powerful. The nurses and teachers come, and all are excited to see that someone has floored Miss Trunchbull at last. They carry her out of the classroom, and as class is dismissed that day Miss Honey comes and gives Matilda a big hug and kiss.
News spreads later that day that Miss Trunchbull woke up, marched out of school, and did not come back the next day. Mr. Trilby, the Deputy Head, goes to investigate, and no one answers the door at her house. When he goes inside the unlocked door, he sees that all her clothes and belongings are gone. She has vanished.
The following day Miss Honey receives notice that her father's will has been mysteriously found, and that it grants Miss Honey ownership of the old red house in which Miss Trunchbull had been living. She also gets his life savings. Within a few weeks she moves in, and Matilda comes to visit every evening after school. Mr. Trilby becomes the school's Head Teacher, and moves Matilda up to the top form with Miss Plimsoll immediately.
A few weeks later while having tea with Miss Honey in her house, Matilda tells her that she suddenly realized she is unable to move objects with her mind at all any more. Miss Honey says she had been expecting something like that to happen, and says she believes the reason it started in the first place was that in Miss Honey's class in the lowest form, she had nothing to challenge her mind. Her brain bubbled up with energy, and with nowhere for it to go, it was channeled into this strange power. Now that she is challenging herself in the top form, all that mental energy is being used for something else. Matilda says she is glad—she did not want to go through life as a miracle worker.
When Matilda returns home that night, she sees a black car parked outside her house. Inside her house, the scene is chaotic as her parents try to pack up the house. They tell her to get going and pack, too, because the family is moving to Spain. Alarmed, Matilda runs back to Miss Honey's house and tells her her parents are trying to move away and never come back, and Miss Honey is not surprised, saying that Matilda's father was involved with a bunch of crooks who steal cars and sell them.
Matilda asks to stay here and live with Miss Honey, and wonders if her parents would agree to give her up. Miss Honey is skeptical, but she allows Matilda to drag her to her house. Matilda begs her parents to allow her to stay with Miss Honey, and Miss Honey says she would raise the girl and it would not cost them a penny. They agree, proving again that they never truly cared about her. Matilda waves happily in Miss Honey's arms as her parents and brother speeding off into the distance.
Analysis
In Chapter 20, Miss Honey makes the statement that "The whole object of life, Headmistress, is to go forwards" (pg. 183). Though it is specifically in reference to math problems, this quote is incredibly important to the book as a whole, and an important life lesson for Matilda. Despite her past, which has been largely absent love and care, Matilda keeps herself looking forward to the future. For a girl as smart as her, the future is incredibly bright, but she will never reach it if she continuously looks backward at her past.
Matilda's actions to save Miss Honey from Miss Trunchbull show remarkable selflessness. After discovering that she had these extraordinarily unique abilities, she could have used them for her own benefit, to get further revenge on her parents or to show off and increase her reputation among the other students. Instead, she uses this power solely for the good of another person: Miss Honey. This selflessness is rare in a young child, and it further sets her apart from her peers.
Matilda's plan is successful because it preys on Miss Trunchbull's insecurities. Though she puts on a veneer of toughness and cruelty, years and years of hiding the truth and manipulating her niece have brought on crippling guilt. When Matilda's floating chalk writes a message to her and brings back the past and the wrath of Magnus, Miss Trunchbull falls prey to remorse and fear and realizes she cannot keep up her abuse and lies any longer. Matilda's plan is so simple, but it works because it pinpoints exactly what scares Miss Trunchbull the most.
At the end of the book, Matilda loses her supernatural power, but Miss Honey's explanation for its existence reveals the importance of challenging the mind. Without knowledge, information, and learning to feed it, Matilda's mind could not figure out where to direct its energy. While the power this resulted in was astounding, it also would have become a burden had it persisted. By finally challenging her mind in an intellectual environment where she is an equal, Matilda can live a normal life, and begin to flourish.
Finally, Matilda sends a vital message to readers that at the end of the day, love is more important than blood. Even though she was related to Mr. and Mrs. Wormwood and Michael, they were never really her family, because family is about so much more than just blood relations. Miss Honey is the truest family Matilda has ever had, nurturing her, loving her, and supporting her the way a parent should. Miss Honey's love allows Matilda to become the person she was meant to be. This is why saying goodbye to her birth parents in the end is not difficult—she knew they could never give her the care she needed, so she was happy knowing she had found it somewhere else.
