| “ | Much too good for children! | ” |
–Miss Trunchbull | ||
Miss Agatha Trunchbull is the main antagonist from Matilda. Ms. Trunchbull is depicted as fat-sized who wears her hair in a bun at the upper rear end and her outfit is a bottle-green tight pants and a black belt with a silver buckle.She is a harsh, arrogant, psychopathic, extremely cruel educator and tyrant who terrorizes children, and most of all dislikes children and states that she was glad that she was never a child or had fun. She makes a weekly visit to every classroom, and tends to take over, but mostly Miss Honey's, probably due to her being her niece. Her idea of detention is to put children into a horrific torture device known as the Chokey, a tall narrow cupboard in a drippy pipe with jagged edges where the walls have broken glass and nails sticking out, like an iron maiden. She is also strict on rules where she did not allow girls to have pigtails. She also does not like boys with long hair. She once threw a girl named Amanda Thripp over the fence by her pigtails, forced a boy named Bruce Bogtrotter to eat a whole 18-inch cake after stating that he stole her own personal cake and once put a boy into a terrible fatal state by throwing him out a 5 story window due to the fact that he was eating Licorice Allsorts while she was talking to his class.
Her fate in the film differs from the book in that, in the book, she is thrown into permanent hysteria by Matilda's cunning revenge and is never seen again. But it is more climatic in the film, in which case whilst Matilda is using the chalk to impersonate Miss Honey's father threatening the Trunchbull from beyond the grave, she makes the windows rattle and the other objects act peculiarly in the room, succeeding in intimidating the Trunchbull. The Trunchbull is fatally traumatized by the ordeal and briefly faints. When she awakens, she loses her sanity completely and runs amok through the school and tries to kill several children, each time thwarted by Matilda's telekinetic powers. Then the entire faculty of schoolchildren, including Bruce Bogtrotter, bombard her with objects such as books, toys and lunchboxes, most of which open when they land on her. The Trunchbull is pursued savagely out of the school, where she retreats into her car and hurtles out of the school, still chased by the angry mob of schoolchildren. The narrator comments that the Trunchbull was never seen again.
In the 1996 film, her violence towards children was somewhat mitigated, though she can be considered to be murderous towards adults, as she threatened to kill Matilda's dad for selling her a defective car. Miss Trunchbull moved in with Dr. Honey to help him take care of Miss Honey when she was 2 after Mrs. Honey died.
Relationships with others
- Matilda Wormwood: A clever young girl, whom she considers as a liar and a scoundrel. She has also accused her of things that she did not do.
- Miss Honey: Miss Trunchbull's niece (her step-sister's daughter). When she took over the mansion after Miss Honey became an orphan, Miss Trunchbull considered to be very mean who would treat children very badly. She has also been shown to take over her class often, and put up rather insulting signs such as, "IF YOU ARE HAVING FUN, YOU ARE NOT LEARNING". It is mentioned in the film that, when Miss Honey was seven years old, the Trunchbull broke her arm. In the musical Miss Honey is born shortly before her mom dies in a Circus Accident.
- Mrs. Honey: The deceased sister of Agatha Trunchbull. Miss Honey doesn't remember her mom. In the movie Miss Trunchbull is Mrs. Honey's step-sister.
- Magnus Honey: The father of Miss. Honey and Miss. Trunchbull's late brother in law who invited her to live with him, out of all Miss. Trunchbull's victums, he is the man whom she actually killed instead of just injuring him. Miss Honey remembers Dr. Honey a little bit. In the musical Dr. Honey and his wife are Circus performers and Miss Trunchbull is their manager.
- Mr. Wormwood: A used car salesman and owner of Wormwood Motors. Agatha had asked him for an inexpensive and reliable car when she stopped to buy a car. She later realized that he cheated her after the car she bought started breaking down and punished his daughter by locking her in the Chokey until Miss Honey rescued her. When the transmission started going haywire, she ran her car back home, and then ran back into her mansion in a flash, and then phoned him and threatened to sue him and burn down his showroom, and/or kill him. Like Mr. Wormwood, she states that adults are always right and children are always wrong.
Personality
Agatha Trunchbull is shown to be a malicious, sarcastic, strong, arrogant, dangerous, brutal, sadistic and cruel psychopath. Besides a passionate hate for children, she is also power-crazed and greedy, trying to maintain a position of power in any way she can. She is also an abusive sadist, who sees violence as the best way when it comes to disciplining children, and keeps a vicious, makeshift torture chamber (which she calls the Chokey) in her office.
She shows incredible degrees of hyper-paranoia, as she is terrified when Matilda raids her house and also mortified when she sees the portrait of Magnus, a man she probably murdered to inherit the estate, takes the place of her own portrait over the fireplace.
Agatha is something of a ruthless disciplinarian who implies absurdly strict rules in her school, which include the banning of pigtails. In the film, the Trunchbull displays something of a God complex, viewing herself as a woman in absolute power (and believing that she has rights over everyone and everything).
However, it is revealed that, behind her "cruel woman" facade, Agatha is shown, deep down, to be a very fearful person, who is terrified of ghosts and the supernatural. In the film, she is also shown to be superstitious; this is shown in one scene when Miss Honey and Matilda see Agatha getting scared of a black cat, and when Matilda asks about Agatha being scared of cats, Miss Honey replies, "Black cats. She's very superstitious".