The Enduring Hero of Matilda is Bruce Bogtrotter - by Sam van Zweden
ISLAND | ISSUE 160
Matilda Wormwood, the ‘tiny’, ‘small’, ‘very small’ heroine of Roald Dahl’s eponymous children’s classic, watches in horror as her ‘gigantic holy terror’ of a headmistress swings a small child through the air by her hair, before sending her sailing across the playground and into a field. This, for the sin of wearing pigtails.
In Tim Minchin’s musical adaptation of Matilda, the heroine sings early on that ‘Even if you’re little you can do a lot, you mustn’t let a little thing like “little” stop you’. In Quentin Blake’s classic illustrations, the girl barely reaches the knees of the adults around her. Matilda doesn’t let ‘little’ stop her, and her powerful revolt against the equation of smallness with powerlessness is something I hold close to my heart. It spoke to me as a child. However, to my surprise, there was another hero of this story who’s also stuck with me: Bruce Bogtrotter, a child who refuses to let ‘big’ stop him.
Many favourite childhood books don’t really stand up to re-reading as adults. Their ideas might lack nuance, or their plot holes open up before our adult eyes. Or – perhaps the most disappointing of all – we discover surprisingly poor politics at play. Surprise racism, perhaps, or sexism.
As an adult with a shifting relationship to my body, my love for Matilda and all its adaptations has not lessened, but changed shape: just like my body. Living in a changing body is a necessary part of being human. As children, we grow rapidly. As teens, the changes become less about size and more about quality: hair, shape, volume. This – so goes the cultural narrative – is where we stop. At this point, we’re told, our bodies are fully cooked, and the aim of the game becomes to maintain this ‘prime’ body of nineteen or twenty- something years old. The shock is rude, then, when I look in the mirror to find a new bump of cellulite along my hip, or find I need to press a little harder into my flesh to locate my clavicle. On my thirtieth birthday, I pulled out a grey hair. Coronavirus has seen me welcome so many more. My body continued – continues – to change. At this point, acceptance (or at the very least, neutrality) has become a more fruitful approach. Around me, others reckon with their own body changes. Some people learn to resist it more, while others learn to stop fighting it. Either way, both our bodies and our attitudes are different than they were before. Matilda has, in my mind, withstood that shift.
Matilda is the story of a child genius who’s born into a family of unkind, wilfully ignorant swindlers who ship her off to a school overseen by a terrifying and cruel headmistress, Miss Trunchbull. It first captured my imagination through its 1996 film adaptation starring Mara Wilson and Danny DeVito. The story of a precocious child who loves to read – I could get behind that. Her development of psychokinetic powers to exercise some control over her lot in life – who didn’t dream of such a miracle? I watched young Matilda embrace her power, sending ingredients whizzing through the air of her kitchen to cook up a golden, steaming stack of sweet and satisfying pancakes. I gleefully shuddered at the film’s gruesome elements: Miss Trunchbull inhaling deeply to sniff out children; the school cook’s appalling hygiene; a newt making its way into a jug of drinking water. I loved that being quietly extraordinary was all that was required to earn Matilda the adoration of her saccharine school teacher, Miss Honey.
Some time in my childhood, I turned to the source text – Roald Dahl’s very accessible but equally captivating chapter book. The Matilda of the book is even more of a prankster, and her precocity even more endearing. Here, her smallness (tiny, small, very small) is even more central to her struggle. In recent years, Tim Minchin’s musical adaptation renewed the sense of magic and nostalgia I feel toward the story. But as I’ve gotten older, Matilda has come to matter to me in new ways – as the home of an unlikely hero I didn’t know I needed: Bruce Bogtrotter. Unlike other characters in Dahl’s oeuvre – despite possessing traits that would usually have such a character squarely punished – Bruce Bogtrotter gets to win.
“But as I’ve gotten older, Matilda has come to matter to me in new ways – as the home of an unlikely hero I didn’t know I needed: Bruce Bogtrotter. Unlike other characters in Dahl’s oeuvre – despite possessing traits that would usually have such a character squarely punished – Bruce Bogtrotter gets to win.”
Food in kids’ literature is truly magical. Maybe this is a reflection of childhood wants, where aspirations stretch to fizzy drinks and ponies, and mealtimes are perhaps the most achievable of desires. However, these wondrous food scenes are written by adults, and appear particularly in the writing of a particular generation: those authors who’d experienced austerity and wartime food shortages and rations were also those whose literary mealtimes shone brightest. I’m thinking of Enid Blyton’s Faraway Tree pop biscuits, and the children’s simple but glorious picnics of strawberries, sandwiches and milk. I’m thinking of hobbits’ seven mealtimes, including second breakfast and the very important elevenses, punctuating the day, right up until supper (9 pm). Ranging from the humble to the extravagant, all these food scenes capture a feeling of utter indulgence: warm milk and biscuits make just as magical a treat as lickable wallpaper and Everlasting Gobstoppers (imagine those inexhaustible resources at your disposal in the face of sugar rations!).
Food comes up again and again in Roald Dahl’s work. Even in his slender autobiographical volume, Boy, a large part of its page count is dedicated to Dahl’s memory of a sweet shop, a family feast, and boarding school fare. Dahl’s magnificent meals are best known through his fiction: a boy lives in a fruit, having escaped his wicked family. An eccentric, solitary man owns a chocolate factory, then gives it away. Giants and crocodiles threaten and sometimes actually do eat children. Dahl had fun with food – this is the creator of fizzy lifting drink, snozzcumbers and the Everlasting Gobstopper.
However, there’s a dark underside to his foodish frivolity – indeed, to Dahl himself, whose divisiveness and cruelty is well documented. Like so many of our childhood faves, his legacy is highly problematic. One element of Dahl’s cruelty present in his children’s stories is his disgust toward people who enjoy eating ‘too much’ – it’s clear and repeated. Often, Dahl caricatures greedy and gluttonous characters – remember Augustus Gloop? And Violet Beauregarde? Their greedy bodies fared so poorly at that chocolate factory.
This punishing trope is indulged by many in Dahl’s generation. For every magical feast in children’s literature, there’s a greedy child who’s punished. Edmund Pevensie dooms his siblings and all of Narnia by loving Turkish Delight too ardently. Alice traps herself in Wonderland and further complicates her story by indulging in every EAT ME and DRINK ME item in her path. Those who like food too much meet untimely and horrific ends: like so many others, Dahl’s magical feasts are not without their hazards. Greedy children in these books are always, always punished.
Dahl underscores the ‘badness’ of his greedy characters through the reward of ‘good’ ones. Prerequisite to any literary feasting is a humble appetite and discipline. Restraint is rewarded. Charlie earns himself the keys to the chocolate factory by denying his appetite, despite the dragging poverty and hunger that’s waiting for him at home.
It’s not hard to see how these stories – these narratives we gobble up as children, when the world is still wonderful and full of delicious possibility – can become part of a more insidious narrative as adults, where the moralising of foods is pervasive. These stories, where greedy kids are punished, are the baseline of how we absorb the story that looms so large in adulthood. Appetite? Get rid of it, it’ll ruin you.
“It’s not hard to see how these stories – these narratives we gobble up as children, when the world is still wonderful and full of delicious possibility – can become part of a more insidious narrative as adults, where the moralising of foods is pervasive. These stories, where greedy kids are punished, are the baseline of how we absorb the story that looms so large in adulthood. Appetite? Get rid of it, it’ll ruin you.”
While food as a theme in Roald Dahl’s work declares itself most loudly in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, it’s Matilda that’s always grabbed me. Maybe it’s because it’s a story with a rare exception to the rule of unpleasant demise for the gluttonous. As Matilda and her friends work to prove their small bodies can still be powerful, sweets and treats are there. The thing that can help grow small bodies out of their helplessness is featured without the usual good/bad dichotomy that appears in Dahl’s other books.
In our world, children’s bodies are only partly their own. Children are routinely picked up and put down at the will of adults; their bodies are cleaned and decorated by adults; their actions are often granted or denied by an older, more powerful person. In Matilda, Dahl turns this fact of childhood into the central tension between a horrendous headmistress, Miss Trunchbull, and her powerless students. Trunchbull regularly locks children in The Chokey – a narrow cupboard lined with shards of glass and nails that mean children are forced to stand at attention for hours at a time – a positively medieval torture device. She throws children through the air across the playground or out of windows as practice for her hammer throw. Every day she goes out of her way to physically intimidate students.
If I imagined myself some kind of Matilda for her brainy solitude when I was a child, perhaps I felt some of this bodily frustration, too, without so directly having the language to express it. As an adult with an enduring relationship with Matilda in all its forms, I definitely understand it. I’m a woman who loves food, living in a larger body, in a culture obsessed with thinness and the moralising of food (prizing smallness and restraint). Bodily autonomy and control is a theme in my own life, and my adult attachment to Matilda has changed to embrace these elements of the story in new ways.
Because of the magic of food in Dahl’s work, and because of the glee he seems to take in punishing kids with ambitious appetites, it’s both surprising and not that food is what helps the children in Matilda triumph. Food is instrumental at turning points in Matilda and its adaptations. Matilda shows off her newfound powers by cooking herself a batch of perfect pancakes. Matilda is pelted with marshmallows by her brother – who yells, ‘Have a marshmallow, dipface!’ – until she learns to control physics and pelts him back. Miss Honey and Matilda use her father’s chocolate box to torture Trunchbull, leading to the happy-ever-after of the story when the headmistress is run out of town. The magic in this story lies in the people, not the food (nothing giant or bewitched or impossible in these meals), but the food plays no less important a role because of it.
Common to the original and both adaptations is the character of Bruce Bogtrotter – a strangely empowered chubby boy who is an exception to Dahl’s tendency to punish greedy children. While food is already important up until this point, it’s Bruce’s act of defiance that pulls bodily autonomy undeniably back into the story.
Bruce Bogtrotter (a typically punishing name for Dahl to give the fat kid) admits to sneaking some of Miss Trunchbull’s chocolate cake. As punishment, he is forced to eat it in its entirety as the rest of the school watches on; enough to make him sick. Once again, Trunchbull makes bodily decisions for her students, shouting at Bruce whenever he stops eating. While the despicable headmistress delights at the thought of making a child unwell in a twisted act of revenge, Bruce eats himself toward discomfort, and beyond it. Bruce sits at the table on the assembly hall stage, shovelling cake into his mouth in front of two hundred and fifty classmates. Will he be sick? When, and how spectacularly? How will Trunchbull win this time? Bruce’s body can surely hold a finite amount of cake, and this one is vast.
Bruce hesitates occasionally, but keeps eating. As he continues, he becomes aware that he’s eating not only for himself, but to reclaim the power of every student at the school who’s been abused by the Trunchbull. Soon they become vocal in their support, rallying him through.
In Tim Minchin’s Matilda the Musical, Bruce’s classmates implore him, ‘Come on Bruce, be our hero!’ Bruce is eating not just for himself, but to challenge Trunchbull as nobody else can. ‘You’ll never again be subject to abuse for your immense caboose’, they sing. It’s catchy and rhythmic, and it’s really quite funny, but it’s also pinpointing exactly what Bruce is taking back as he eats. As he claims ownership over his own body, celebrating his capacity and beginning to understand his powers of consumption, Bruce Bogtrotter swings power in his own favour. His chubby child’s body gives him the ability to win against Trunchbull. While she tries to make him feel inferior for his size and appetite, using his body against him, Bruce refuses to let it in. And for a brief moment, with chocolate cake smeared across his face, with his classmates jumping onto their chairs to shout encouragement (in the book), with the huge glass platter held like a trophy above his head as a soaring score crescendos (in the film), Miss Honey shouting ‘GO BRUCIE!’ (in the musical) – in that moment, Bruce Bogtrotter wins, even if it’s just for a second. He has done what’s impossible; something nobody else in that school could have managed.
The cake – the locus of power in this scene – has become Bruce’s weapon of choice. This is the measure of Bruce’s strength. He wrests the power back. He is self-sufficient and substantial.
“The cake – the locus of power in this scene – has become Bruce’s weapon of choice. This is the measure of Bruce’s strength. He wrests the power back. He is self-sufficient and substantial.”
This is common to all the Bruces – in the book and both adaptations. They are empowered by eating. Bruce’s eating grows him and grows him. He becomes bigger than Trunchbull – victorious. Bruce Bogtrotter’s body is his own.
Who knew that Bruce Bogtrotter could be an enduring hero? I’m reading Matilda differently as an adult who lives in a world where ‘body acceptance’ is turning into big bucks, but is still skewed hard toward thinness, and whiteness, and able bodies. Now, when screen representation of fat characters includes normalising narratives like Shrill and Dumplin’, when audiences are more willing to recognise the extreme athleticism of bodies of all sizes (from diminutive Pink to powerful Lizzo), maybe it’s time to reconsider Bruce Bogtrotter. While Minchin’s end point is to have the school’s children embrace ‘revolting’ (in both senses of the word), I think the message is that body power is there for the taking if you can turn towards it. Matilda’s psychokinetic powers make her extraordinary, but all of the children in Matilda have their own power to harness. I’m coming to realise Bruce was the icon we didn’t know we had, who showed us the power of appetite and body autonomy by eating a whole, heavy, gooey chocolate cake, made with real butter and real cream. ▼
This article appeared in Island 160 in 2020. Order a print issue here.
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