Matilda, the original millennial
For the 30th anniversary of the publication of Roald Dahl’s Matilda,
special editions were published showing various iterations of an imagined 30-year-old Matilda: she was CEO of the British Library; an astrophysicist; a world explorer. Illustrator Quentin Blake said, “Since, as a small child, Matilda was gifted in several ways, it wasn’t very difficult… her extraordinary talents and achievements would have come to the fore and shown her a role in life.”
I felt betrayed. Like many millennials, Matilda was a deeply formative childhood best friend. Though lacking Matilda’s independence, bravery, terrible parents and ability to multiply, I strongly identified with this book-loving little weirdo.
Like the rest of our generation who grew up being told we were special, I suppose I thought Matilda would never reach her childhood potential. She wouldn’t be CEO of the British Library, but she’d have piles of books she’d compulsively buy and display, while watching hours of truecrime documentaries and hating herself.
She wouldn’t be an explorer; she wouldn’t be able to afford it. It would be miserable Ryanair flights and Eastern European second cities. Astrophysicist? Hah! She graduated into a recession; there were no jobs in astrophysics, and she bloody well took what she could get — which was an unpaid internship. Now she’s a social-media strategist/senior barista who will start writing her novel/podcast soon.
We need Matilda now more than ever: she taught us that grown-ups aren’t always right; that there is power in learning. This little empath was a total snowflake. Indeed, there’s something distinctly Trumpian about Miss Trunchbull — the laziness, ignorance, bullying and erroneous qualifications. The terrible hair and the whiff of hugless childhood: “I’m big and you’re small. I’m right and you’re wrong”.
We learned that, when faced with a dickhead, sometimes you have to be a dickhead, too. Evil hates humiliation. Sensitivity is not a weakness.
We need Matilda. I’ll be avoiding the new editions; I need to believe that she’s still just like us.