Why on earth didn’t the librarian safeguard Matilda?

[BeardofHagrid]

This five-year-old has to cross a busy High Street to get to the library, then comes out with, “Oh yeah, Mum goes to Bingo every day and leaves me alone in the house till night time so I come here. I taught myself to read because of the neglect.”

And all the librarian has to say is, “There’s another Charles Dickens for you, my love, do come back soon”?!

Like…..? Was she not bothered at all?

Matilda was written in the 80s. Having been brought up back then, it's not that outrageous tbh. Of course it's hyperbole/exaggerated, but its not that unbelievable.

Teachers would often put their hands on kids, for example. A whack around the head was normal, I've been hit with a ruler many times. I also knew a teacher that would lock naughty boys in his cupboard. I knew many kids that walked themselves to school at a young age - one boy was late every day, his parent/s literally didn't give a fig, but nothing was done about it 🤷‍♀️

It's one of the reasons I roll my eyes when people start on about the good old days. I'm sorry, but for some kids those days were pretty shit, actually.

With regards to Trunchbull’s school, think of all the horrific things happening in real life in schools, boarding schools, sports groups and churches in the not so distant past. So many cases of abuse with children either not listened to or too scared to tell. These fictional tales highlight how powerless children were in that era and I would include the 80s/90s in that.

Really damages the gritty social realism of the rest of the novel, doesn't it?

I'm an 80s child. Our science teacher used to whack people with the board rubber. I got a 'clip round the ear' by another teacher. I also cycled to school from age 7 and that was about a 3 mile journey. Going to the library on your own would not have been considered at all out of the ordinary.

Also in the Matilda book she talks about how she is fed pretty well. Miss honey has bread and margarine (shocker it's not butter) but Matilda has chocolate cakes etc. after school. So she wasn't mistreated beyond her family not being at all academically inclined.

And fiddling the odometer

😂 Why is my first thought "Tell me you're a millennial without telling me you’re a millennial!" ?😂

Eh? I'm a millennial born in the 80s. We played unsupervised on the beach while our parents got shitfaced, jumped off the top of school buildings at lunchtime, and spent more time in A and E than the library

Writers for children are noted for letting their young characters live on the edge. Don't forget Enid Blyton letting the Famous Five run around all over the countryside annoying people and cadging picnics. Their parents were clueless. Then there's Frances Hodgson Burnett and her predilection for tormenting small girls - Mary Lennox is lucky to survive the early events in The Secret Garden and as for A Little Princess... in this day and age, one would hope that Miss Minchin would be sent down. She certainly deserves it.

I can't remember where I read it, but apparently, in children's literature, fully present adults don't fit well with allowing child characters to really spread their wings and experience serious jeopardy. Even in Little Women, the fact that Marmee (who is generally idealised) is so busy keeping things together, she takes her eye off one or two details, for example the deteriorating relationship between Jo and Amy. The outcome is nearly catastrophic. But had Marmee been perfect and on the ball about everything, there'd have been less of a story.

In the 80s I used to walk to primary school alone and even took my 4 year younger sister to reception class! Our teachers weren't shy in clipping folks about the ear or hurling a board rubber or a chalk / pen at kids who didn't listen. We had to sit in front of the god awful school lunch until end of break if we didn't eat it all and the head would pop past and lecture on the starving kids in Africa (sometimes the nice dinner lady would rescue you and sweep it into a pig bucket whilst no one was looking). I'm 48 now and I still think kindly about Mrs Morris my primary school dinner lady and her pig bucket.

Matilda was cleary an exageration but it wasn't so far from the normality of the 80s that us old folks don't recognise aspects.

For that matter, why didn’t James and Lily have a backup guardian in case something happened to Sirius? They were in hiding and he was part of a movement fighting Death Eaters, they didn’t think to have a plan for the baby if none of them survived? Always seemed mad to me that her estranged Muggle sister was next on the list.

How come the extended Bucket family were so poor, when Mr Bucket had a job and all four grandparents would have been eligible for state pensions? 🤔

Nobody appears to have done background checks on Miss Honey before allowing her to adopt a child from her class with whom she seemed to have formed an inappropriately close relationship.

I agree! I used to volunteer at a school reading with Year 6. I read the abduction scene and was completely horrified. The kid I was reading with was just into the drama of the story, but with adult eyes it is deeply disturbing. I think Dahl knew this. He had a taste for horror.

But the BFG was also written after the death of Roald Dahl's daughter Olivia, who died from Measles. A child suddenly 'snatched away'.

they were so awful because harry was a horcrux though. They’re not nice people but made worse by harry being a horcrux

Wasn’t it normal/expected at those times to use the cane?

<mind you , just found out one of my kid’s friend’s parents is using for homework too 😐>

And then, of course, there’s the absolutely terrifying story “the swan”, in the Henry Sugar book, involving two ruffian boys, a gun, a middle class younger boy, and a railway line. I read it when I was eight years old. No way would a story like that be published today, since a certain notorious case in 1993.

I loved the book Danny the Champion of the World, especially:

• Mr hazell threatening Danny with a good hiding if he made finger marks on his Rolls Royce.
• The odd morality of poaching pheasants.
• The headmaster Mr Snoddy drinking alcohol in class (unthinkable now).
• The caning scene - I found that morbidly fascinating, and the fury of Danny’s father, and Danny has to talk him out of beating the daylights out of the teacher who did it.
• The farcical scenes involving the vicar’s wife, the giant pram, the pheasants, and the Rolls Royce. As a child I thought that scene was utterly ridiculous.

And my parents were mortified when I read George’s Marvellous Medicine to my grandmother. The reason they might not like it went completely over my head.

In some circles, women used to wear white cotton gloves outside the house fairly commonly - in the same sort of situations that both men and women would wear hats.

Actually the school inspector does come round to Danny's caravan and is told by the dad he's a qualified teacher and is home educating him.

Or were they just hiding something! 🧙

Coz it would have been a shit story if she had

At least you knew that it was a bad idea to shut yourself inside a wardrobe, as CS Lewis repeatedly said so.

Incidentally, Matilda says that she thinks CS Lewis is a good writer, but there are no funny bits in his books. I don’t think that’s true at all - the Narnia books are filled with funny scenes. And who can forget Tom Baker as Puddleglum in 1990?

Agreed. Quite how you send your child back after the snake only to hear about GIANT SPIDERS the year after baffles me. Like.. the snake wasn't bad enough?! Surely at some point you just think I don't want my baby eaten by a ginormous reptile/insect/dragon/ogre and start looking at homeschooling.. X

It’s horrifying isn’t it. I read it as when I was about ten, at almost exactly the time the Bulger case was all over the news, and always conflated the two in my head. Incredibly upsetting- I don’t think I’ve read it since.