The Path With Obstacles

Savant Syndrome as Magical Powers

Let’s start with the obvious; not every autistic person is a savant. While it may seem that we possess unusual knowledge (usually about our hyper fixations), very few of us are actually at the level of savant in our daily lives. Alan Turing, Temple Grandin, Albert Einstein, all seemed to be able to perform magic in their fields to the ordinary eye, which is why Matilda’s telekinesis is such an interesting choice for an autistically coded character. The ability to move things with her mind seems to come from both her neglectful upbringing and her high intellect, but its not implied to be a skill anyone else in the story might be able to learn. It’s Matilda’s special ability, her unique way of seeing the world, that parallels her magical powers with autistic savant syndrome.

Not only is Matilda smart, not only is she different, she’s magical. She’s so smart she can move things with her mind. This power fantasy type superpower enables Matilda to seek and deal out the justice she thinks the people around her deserve, something I think a lot of autistic children wish they could do once or twice growing up to the adults around them. It’s actually Matilda’s fixation on justice that drives the story forward, which leads to…

Righteous Sense of Justice

“When a person is bad, that person has to be taught a lesson,” Mr. Wormwood yells at one point in the movie. 

“Person?” Matilda wonders, and this lovely example of literal thinking leads Matilda into the driving action of the story; the pursuit of justice for those wronged around her.

It starts with her father; she decides to punish him for being bad, both as a father and a businessman, by slipping peroxide into his hair oil, and then later gluing his hat to his head. This could be painted as a story of revenge, except that Matilda is our hero, and so her righteousness is rewarded. When she finds out Ms. Honey’s tragic backstory, she sets out to settle the score with the Trunchbull, using her powers to play psychological mind games with her until she breaks down and leaves, never to be seen again.

But the biggest moment in the story where Matilda’s overdeveloped sense of justice shows itself is in the cafeteria, when Bruce is being forced to eat the Trunchbull's chocolate cake.  All of the other students are sitting quietly, waiting for Bruce to throw up and the Trunchbull to win, but it’s Matilda who stands up and yells “You can do it, Brucey!” and incites the other kids to riot and rebel in support of their friend.  Regardless of the consequences, Matilda chooses what she believes to be right, and says so loudly and with total conviction. It’s possible she didn’t even comprehend the consequences at the time, but in that moment she simply could not sit down and stay silent. 

Matilda also constantly struggles with the injustice in her life, crying into her books when things don’t make sense and wondering if good people are simply a thing found in stories.  

Waiting for My Other Family

More than anything, it’s Matilda’s internal knowledge that she is different from those around her and her feelings of isolation that provide, for me, the biggest parallel with autistic experience.  When she’s big enough to xerox, Matilda finds and copies the legal paperwork for adoption from the library.  She keeps these papers with her, daily, all the way until the end of the movie, when Ms. Honey adopts her using them.

Every lonely autistic child, diagnosed or undiagnosed, who starts to understand that they are different from those around them in some invisible way, who wonders what is wrong with them, will fantasize about finding their other/real/alien family, the one they really come from, who will understand them and make everything right.

Like so many of the stories involving autistic coded characters, it’s unlikely Roald Dahl knew what kind of neurotype he was portraying at the time. Throughout history, many autistic people have been labeled as “eccentric” or similarly othered as a way of explaining their differences. Matilda is one such case; reading her character as autistic with the way we now understand adds a different kind of depth to her story. And in the end, Matilda gets what she has always wanted, which is a happy ending with the person who understands her best.  As the narrator suggests, once she is loved, accommodated, and accepted for who she is, she never has a need to use her autistic telekinesis powers again.

Below are some other moments that lend credence to the Matilda-as-Autistic theory that perhaps don’t need as much explanation.

Matilda can do large, complex mathematical problems in her head, with seemingly little effort.

When Matilda’s father forces her to watch TV with the family instead of read, Matilda explodes the TV in her anger. This is a perfect metaphor for a meltdown.

Matilda raises her hand during the newt in the glass scene the correct the Trunchbull, but ends up looking like she is admitting guilt instead. The need to correct the mislabeling of the newt as a snake was stronger than her sense of self preservation.

When she promises Ms. Honey she won’t ever go back inside the house, she instead climbs on the shed and uses her powers to take the doll and chocolates.  This is an example of loophole thinking; she doesn’t break her promise because she’s taking it literally.   

During the adoption scene, Matilda’s mother says “You’re the only daughter I ever had Matilda, and I never understood you, not one little bit!” This is pretty common for autistic children of allistic parents. Many undiagnosed girls in the 80’s and 90’s were told they were spoiled or that they would grow out of their seemingly immature traits.  In reality, autism was originally seen as a “boys’ disease” because it presents so differently in girls, which is why many Gen X and Millennial girls were missed during this time period. 

Matilda develops a rich inner imaginary world, something specific to girls with autism. They tend to turn inward and have wild imaginations and throw themselves into books and films and hyper fixations. Reading is her escape, and her books also let her know she isn’t alone, another thought echoed throughout many isolated autistic kids’ childhoods. 

Matilda asks a lot of questions throughout the movie. This is a great and common tool in screenwriting to give the audience exposition, but in the Watsonian world we’re talking about, this is another thing autistic kids do incessantly.  We ask questions about normal things that most people understand or use “common sense” for, but we need to have it explained as clearly as possible.