Department of English
“Too ridiculous to be believed” – an Analysis of Fairy Tale Violence in Roald Dahl’s Children’s Fiction
Daniel Halonen
Independent project in teacher’s education, basic level
Literature Spring, 2021
Supervisor: Anna Uddén
Abstract
The aim of this essay is to examine several categories of violence in Roald Dahl’s children’s fiction, with the background of fairy tale theory. Roald Dahl’s children’s fiction has raised criticism, and the grounds of it are reconsidered in this essay. Violence is a declining feature of children’s literature, and the sometimes-excessive use of it in Dahl’s fiction is conspicuous, therefore. If Dahl’s children’s fiction is located in the genre of fairy tales, however, and the violence analysed as a device inherited from this tradition, its function and effect become clear, as shown in this essay. In a study of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964), The Witches (1985), and Matilda (1988), I find that violence in Dahl’s fiction has three main effects; cautionary, entertaining, and cathartic effects. I also find that the burlesque quality of violence in Dahl’s work makes the charges of criticism less meaningful.
Keywords: children’s literature; burlesque violence; retaliatory violence; cautionary effect; cathartic effect; fairy tale tradition; cautionary tales
Roald Dahl’s children’s fiction has been loved by generations, throughout the decades since his first success, James and the Giant Peach (in USA 1961, in GB 1967), which established his name on the sky of children’s literature genre (Howard 2017). The story world that bends the rules of the natural world, the humour of unexpected events, and the action-packed plots have appealed to both children and adult readers. Despite Dahl’s popularity, however, some of the aspects of his works have raised criticism. In a review of criticism of Dahl’s work on these grounds, Jonathon Culley lists aspects that have been criticized: “vulgarity, fascism, violence, sexism, racism, … and the promotion of criminal behaviour” (1991, 59). One does not have to read much of Dahl’s fiction to recognise the grounds of the criticism. In Matilda, the headmistress violently throws children over the schoolyard by their hair, and in The Witches, there are suggestions that “any woman could be a witch”, which sounds immediately sexist. In this essay, I will examine the violence in Dahl’s books, and I will consider his work as a part of the fairy tale tradition, where scholars have located it (Culley 1991; Thacker 2012; Worthington 2012, 124).
Violence in fairy tales and children’s literature has been declining since the second part of the twentieth century, and this decline is only accelerating (Oziewicz and Hade 2013, 105). The changes in society, and how we treat child abuse, for instance, are reflected in the evolution of children’s fiction and fairy tales (104-105).
This can be seen in the widely popular retellings of traditional fairy tales in film adaptations by Walt Disney. An example of Disneyfication could be Little Mermaid that features a happy ending in the Disney adaptation, Ariel and Eric getting married, when in Andersen’s version, Eric marries a princess, and the mermaid is turned into
waves of the sea. Everyone who is familiar with the brother Grimm’s fairy tales can see that the sharpest edge of the violence has vanished in these recent adaptations (Tatar 1998, 71). Dahl, however, who wrote his best-sellers between the years 1961, with James and the Giant Peach, and 1988, with Matilda, seems to return to the earlier folk tale tradition where violence had more of a ‘cathartic’ function (Thacker 2012, 19).
Maria Tatar, a scholar in the fields of folklore and children’s literature, has also studied violence in children’s literature (Tatar 1992). Despite the popularity of Roald Dahl’s books, and of the film adaptations based on them, there are not many scholarly studies of Dahl’s work. There are only three monographs, and one anthology (Valle 2016, 2). However, Roald Dahl’s work is included in Maria Tatar’s work on fairy-tale theory (1998), where she treats Dahl’s violence. Even if violence is evidently one of the essential features of Dahl’s books, there are few other studies that focus on this aspect. Even Worthington (2012), who discusses Dahl’s violence, focuses largely on other aspects such as criminality and registers of reality in his works.
In this essay I will examine different categories of violence in Dahl’s work, with a basis in Tatar’s theory of fairy tales and children’s fiction. Tatar (1998) makes a distinction between two types of violence in tales: burlesque violence and retaliatory violence (71–72). Burlesque violence is exaggerated, for example, a witch preparing a cannibalistic feast, and retaliatory is often a physical punishment, for example, a villain being beaten at the end of the story. According to Tatar, both types of violence may lead the child audience to laugh, but it is not necessarily the violence they laugh at, perhaps the whole staging and display (72). I will further discuss these together with other effects later in this essay. Interestingly, the retaliatory type of violence is to be found in stories that adults write, as children’s literature is, of course (71), but not in stories children write themselves: “It was less important to kill monsters than to befriend them and to persuade others to accept them” (Tatar 1998, 72).
I will examine verbal aggression, retaliatory violence, and burlesque violence in Roald Dahl’s works, showing that Dahl develops emblematic aspects of folk and fairy tales. The aim of this essay is thus to analyse violence and its effects in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory ([1964] 2016), The Witches ([1985] 2016), and Matilda ([1988] 2016). Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is one of the first published books (1964), and the other two titles are the last of Dahl’s longer books for children, published in the 1980s. The three books allow me to discuss both Dahl’s early and late work. I will particularly examine the violence of adult characters, and categorise this as
burlesque or retaliatory, in light of the fairy tale tradition. In addition to Tatar’s categories, I have added a third category of verbal aggression, to cover the passages that do not feature physical violence. Also, I will consider possible effects, such as cathartic, cautionary, and entertaining or humorous effects. This essay examines the questions: What are the different types of violence in Dahl’s books? How are these categories of violence related to the fairy tale tradition? What are the effects of violence in the three books by Dahl examined here?
Cautionary and educational stories were common constructs of folk and fairy tales, collected and published in books in the 19th century, and one of the most prototypical examples could be the German children’s book Struwwelpeter (or “Shock- headed Peter”), published 1845. Typically, in a cautionary tale, something is said to be dangerous, but the main character disregards the warning, only to face an often unproportionally unpleasant end. Cautionary stories are featured in Dahl’s work in several storytelling moments: in Matilda, the protagonist tells a cautionary story to her father, and in The Witches, Grandmamma tells such stories to the protagonist. These are examples of Roald Dahl’s way to play with the tradition of cautionary fairy tales.
Thacker refers to a fairy tale theorist Zipes, who claims that when fairy tales were established as stable texts into the children’s literature genre in the 19th century, they transformed to be serving the purpose of socialisation. Those stabilised stories were cautionary tales, intending to persuade children to obey the laws and norms set by adults (Zipes qtd. by Thacker 2012, 18).
According to Thacker, Roald Dahl returns to fantastical violence, an element of the more traditional, carnivalesque folk tales (Thacker 2012, 17). However, Dahl’s work emphasizes oral storytelling, as shown above, and as we shall see in the analysis section when looking more closely into the storytelling moments that feature violence.
Because of this emphasis, Thacker sees Dahl’s relation to folklore and fairy tales as paradoxical. According to her, Dahl is using cautionary tale qualities, but with extensive use of playful, burlesque violence (2012, 19). Tatar also discusses this paradoxicality, when she points to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as an example of where “extremes can meet” in Dahl’s work (1998, 80).
However, it is not only the violence itself that is significant, and to understand the purpose of violence; it is also relevant to consider the effect it has on readers. For instance, retaliatory violence, when evildoers are punished, might give the readers a cathartic pleasure. However, the surreal violent narrative might give the child audience
a vicarious experience. Worthington supports the latter idea (2012). He suggests that the violence in Dahl’s books is vicarious, or escapism, for the child readers, giving them a refuge to live their imagination in a safe space. A safe space where they can be
“naughty, scatological, empowered and … metaphorically revenged on the adults who control children’s lives” (124–125). Worthington also gives examples of revenge, which is often implicitly violent in Dahl’s books. For instance, the children in the Chocolate Factory “seem to bring their own punishments” (126). I believe that the vengeance Worthington discusses here might also lead the reader to experience catharsis, especially when the vengeance is combined with violence. Catharsis, as an emotional discharge, would be one reason why a child audience often reacts to the violence or its display, as Tatar describes, with laughter – a strong emotional action (1998, 72). Tatar claims that Dahl believed in the cathartic pleasures of narrative violence, a healing effect of retribution (1998, 81).
Regarding the adult characters, some of them are recognised as being modelled on Dahl’s personal life. Actually, many Dahl studies include biographical criticism. It is indeed tempting to draw parallels between Dahl’s personal history and his books.
Dahl experienced war as a pilot, and he was not foreign to violence. An interesting confluence is how Dahl’s personal experience from his school years, and what happens to one of his characters in Danny the Champion of the World (Dahl 2016) are similar.
Danny gets punished by his teacher, Captain Lancaster, and Dahl has himself talked about a physical punishment given by a teacher Captain Hardcastle, a remarkably similar name, and as Worthington puts it, the “Fictional episode resonates with the factual event and the description of the pain is remarkably similar” (Worthington 2012, 131). Similarly, Dahl modelled Mr Wormwood on a local filling station owner, who, according to Dahl’s nephew, was “a total black market dealer … a complete spiv”
(Sturrock 2010, 287).
To further discuss Mr Wormwood’s character, the third category of violence, verbal aggression, must be considered. Burlesque violence in Dahl’s books is often realised in the characters’ speech. Particularly in the adult characters’, mainly the antagonists’, speech about, or directly to, the child characters. This verbal violence is often insults and shouting. In real life, parental verbal aggression is a kind of abuse, harmful for children, increasing the risk of mental and behavioural problems, which is why I consider it as violence, too (Tomoda et al. 2011; Moore and Pepler 2006).
However, verbal violence is not as apparent as the other forms of violence in Dahl’s
books, as we shall see; it functions mostly as characterisations of the antagonists, making them seem nastier – together with the descriptions of their appearance.
Sometimes, the verbal aggression is not even exaggerated enough to be considered as distinctly burlesque, which is the case of Mr Wormwood.
In Matilda (Dahl 2016), there are two main antagonists; Miss Trunchbull, the headmistress of Matilda’s, the main protagonist’s, school, and Mr Wormwood, Matilda’s father, who uses the most verbal aggression in the first parts of the book. The first instance of verbal abuse is in the second chapter. Mr Wormwood is telling a story about his “trade secrets” to his son Mike, when Matilda interrupts, and accuses her father of cheating. Mr Wormwood begins to shout at her after she had said that she hates the dirty money he is making: “Who the heck do you think you are, … the Archbishop of Canterbury…? You’re just an ignorant little squirt who hasn’t the foggiest idea what you’re talking about” (19). Later, Matilda is thinking about these words. She resents being called ignorant and stupid and decides to “get her own back in some way or another…” when, as the intrusive narrator says, her mother or father is
“beastly” to her. Even if his father had not used physical force, Matilda still felt that he had been abusive. Matilda’s solution to cope with abusive parents is to have her revenge: “a small victory or two would help her to tolerate their idiocies…” (23). These thoughts establish the pattern that will be used several times in the book. Matilda is a little girl against the nasty, violent and powerful grown-ups, who will have her revenge, one way or another.
When Matilda’s first revenge is to superglue his father’s hat, she succeeds and the readers are pleased together with Matilda, who describes this as “a most satisfactory exercise.” (31). Even if supergluing is not a violent action as such, this sub-plot demonstrates one of the cathartic effects. First, Dahl builds emotions as the reader identifies with the protagonist, for instance, by having them experience something that cannot be justified, in this case the father’s verbal aggression. Then, through the vengeance, this emotional tension is released. This is also why there is not always an obvious link between the verbal abuse and its context. For instance, the passage that leads to Matilda’s second revenge:
‘Don’t give me that rubbish!’ the father shouted. ‘Of course you looked!
You must have looked! No one in the world could give the right answer just like that, especially a girl! You’re a little cheat, madam, that’s what you are! A cheat and a liar!’ (emphasis added, 49)
Here, Mr Wormwood’s burst of insults cannot be justified by Matilda’s actions: he blasts her with these insults after she has done nothing mischievous, but only completed a series of additions that were seemingly too difficult for her age, and using only mental arithmetic. There is no burlesque here, nor any entertaining qualities of the verbal aggression, nor does it function as a cautionary story on its own. When Matilda then makes his father bleach his hair without him knowing it, however, it seems like a just revenge. Mr Wormwood deserves the revenge, since he has been aggressive with his words.
Mr Wormwood does not seem to be equally aggressive when talking to his son, but he does not spare his wife from his verbal aggression. When the family is trying to pull the hat from his head, and his wife suggests that he has not been careful enough with the super glue, he calls her a “stupid witch” (27). Consequently, Mr Wormwood is portrayed as a father or a husband who does not respect his daughter or his wife, both being female characters. At the end of the book, he is busted from the dirty car dealing business, and he will have to flee. Mr Wormwood’s violent character can be seen as a counter example of the criticism of Dahl. Despite the obvious verbal violence, criminal businesses, and degrading sexism, or promotion of patriarchy, he is in the end used as a cautionary example of how harm hatch is harm catch.
Another example of an abusive character and the abusive use of language in Matilda is from the headmistress, Miss Trunchbull. Just like Mr Wormwood is the head of the family, miss Trunchbull is also an authority, the head of Matilda’s school. When meeting the children in the classroom, she calls them names and insults them: She expresses distaste in gestures and tells the children that they are ”a bunch of nauseating little warts” or “a load of garbage” in her school (135). The difference from Mr Wormwood is that Miss Trunchbull is a much more wildly exaggerated character. Even before this speech, Miss Trunchbull has been portrayed as an abusive adult on several occasions, which will be discussed further, when considering the more physical violence. However, this is the first time that she speaks directly to the children, including the protagonist, who is, of course, the most relatable character to the reader, making the insults come closer to the reader. Similarly, just like Mr Wormwood shows no respect for his family, when Miss Trunchbull insults the pupils, she shows no respect for them, which would make Matilda’s later actions, and revenge, seem justified. Miss Trunchbull addresses her pupils as “nauseating little warts”, without any other given reason – she is purely evil character.
Even if Miss Trunchbull is not a mother herself, a link to parental verbal aggression can also be made. When the kind teacher, Miss Honey, tells Matilda secrets from her own life, it is revealed to the reader that Miss Trunchbull has been, in fact, an abusive aunt and guardian of her (190). Miss Trunchbull’s character is thus made to appear even more horrifying, when associated with a maternal role. The nastiness of her, abusing children in the school physically and verbally, is even more effective since she has been a guardian of such a wholesome character as Miss Honey.
The verbal violence is not as prevalent in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Dahl 2016), nor is there an obvious adult villain. A little absurdly, direct insulting and name-calling come mainly from the factory’s side: Willy Wonka and his Oompa Loompas, who becomes allies of the protagonist. However, Charlie’s family also use a rather strong language when discussing the children who have found the golden tickets:
“’That’s even worse than the fat boy,’ said Grandma Josephine. ‘She needs a really good spanking,’ said Grandma Georgina” (31). However, they are not talking to the children in question directly, which lightens the effect. Mr Wonka and Oompa Loompas are not equally discreet.
The verbal violence of Wonka is most often directed against the spoiled children. When Augustus Gloop is sucked in the pipe of the Chocolate Room, and the parents are worried whether he will turn into fudge, Wonka cries: “Never!” because
“the taste would be terrible … No one would buy it”. The Oompa Loompa that is called to guide the parents to the room where Augustus has been taken, bursts into laughter when he hears about the boy, as a kind of verbal violence.
So are the Oompa Loompas’ songs. When the parents are leaving, for instance, a group of Oompa Loompas starts singing. The first part of the song of Augustus Gloop is full of insulting references to the boy, such as “nincompoop, beast, and pig”. They even play with the idea of him being turned into sweets:
But this revolting boy, of course Was so unutterably vile,
So greedy, foul, and infantile, (94)
When Gloop is first mentioned as a first founder of a golden ticket, he is already portrayed as a spoiled child. His obesity is described in detail, and his parents do not seem to be worrying about it, but quite the opposite: “’I just knew Augustus would find a Golden Ticket,’ … ‘Eating is his hobby’ … ‘that’s better than being a hooligan and shooting off zip guns” (26). Grandma Josephine puts the readers' thoughts into words,
when she says, “What a revolting woman” (27). In the factory, the spokespersons of the reader’s thoughts are the Oompa Loompas.
The reader’s catharsis begins already when the unruly boy has an accident and further continues when the Oompa Loompas dare to speak their minds about the nasty boy. Oompa Loompas begin their singing, just as the parents are leaving, which suggests that the parents would hear their quite judgemental song, a lesson of parenting.
The Oompa Loompas are said to be dancing and beating drums, and when their exaggerated, rhyming song keeps on continuing, catharsis turns into entertainment, particularly towards the end of the song, when the lyrics become even more graphic, describing the fudge machine the boy is going through:
Slowly, the wheels go round and round, The cogs begin to grind and pound;
A hundred knives go slice, slice, slice;
We add some sugar, cream and spice;
We boil him for a minute more, (95)
This is nothing but burlesque violence, with the details of the machine cutting the boy into fudge. A story about a boy made into fudge combined with the display and staging is simply too surreal to be taken seriously. This passage is also what Tatar means with the two extremes meeting, as mentioned above: we are still hearing a song that functions equally as burlesque as it has a story with cautionary effect, where a disobedient boy faces a painful end. Tatar uses this particular song in her argument that the book overall is similar to other cautionary tales, where unruly children are socialized. Despite the effect of cautionary tales, however, Tatar still considers this as an example of burlesque and humorous violence: “The children’s book written with a subversive intent and aimed at celebrating burlesque humour can have the same effect as the book written with the express purpose of reinscribing cultural norms and socializing unruly children” (1998, 80-81).
Gloop’s parents survive the factory without being ridiculed, but that is not the case with Mr and Mrs Salt, the parents of Veruca, who is third in line to end the tour through an ‘accident’. All children but the protagonist are punished during the tour, but Veruca Salt is the only one whose parents are dragged to the same fate with her. In relation to burlesque violence, according to Stallcup, who has studied the role of humour and taboo in Dahl’s fiction, the children visiting the factory are one- dimensional examples of their naughtiness or sinfulness; If Gloop’s sin is gluttony, Veruca’s is greed. Stallcup sees this as Dahl’s way to include conservative and adult-
pleasing morals in his works (Stallcup 2012, 45). Indeed, adults often see the characteristics of the children of other families, for better or worse, as a result of raising or parenting. Dahl’s decision to put the parents of annoying Veruca down the pipe together with her might be a way of giving the adult readers, too, a sense of justice. The comment on the parents is in fact made already when the news of Veruca finding the ticket is discussed within the Bucket’s family: “He spoils her, and no good can ever come from spoiling a child like that” as the Grandpa Joe says (Dahl 2016, 31).
The sub-plot of Veruca follows a similar pattern as Gloop: she is from the very beginning portrayed as a spoiled, greedy, and overall annoying child. Within the course of the factory tour, the reader becomes gradually more and more frustrated with Veruca’s endless demands – first a pet Oompa Loompa, then a boat made of candy.
Wonka and Veruca have been arguing whether the sweets that are “square that look round,” actually look round. Veruca’s father interrupts the chat, by saying: “pay no attention to Mr Wonka! He’s lying to you!”. Wonka, who has not shown signs of losing his temper, snaps back: “My dear old fish … go and boil your head!” When Mr Salt tries to regain his status, Wonka shut’s him up: “Oh, do shut up” (Dahl 2016, 126). In the following scene, for the last time Veruca gets to demand something from the factory: a trained squirrel used to detect hollow sounding nuts. When Wonka declines her demands, she does not listen to him, but instead dashes to the room, and finds herself in trouble, when a squirrel is tapping her head. Suddenly, the things escalate:
The squirrels pulled Veruca to the ground and started carrying her across the floor.
‘My goodness, she is a bad nut after all,’ said Mr Wonka. ‘Her head must have sounded quite hollow’
Veruca kicked and screamed, but it was no use. The tiny strong paws held her tightly and she couldn’t escape.
‘Where are they taking her?’ shrieked Mrs Salt.
‘She’s going where all the other bad nuts go,’ said Mr Willy Wonka. ‘Down the rubbish chute.’ (131)
The rubbish chute does not sound as dangerous or violent as a boy being sliced into fudge, or girl-blueberry being juiced, as happened to the second victim of the factory, but Dahl is using suspense here. The real danger is that the chute would lead to incinerators, and the only chance to survive alive is, according to Wonka, “that they’ve decided not to light it today” (134). When the parents are trying to figure out if their daughter really has gone down the chute, they are pushed one by one down the hole.
In comparison to the fate of Gloop and the other children, Veruca’s case seems to be fatal; she is with great odds going to be burned alive together with her parents. In the cautionary tale, such excessive punishments were rather common, but in the scope of Dahl’s fiction I am analysing here, this kind of excessive punishment in the retaliatory category is not often used. According to Worthington (although he is discussing The Witches and its fantasy qualities), Dahl uses implicit violence and shifts in registers from reality to pure fantasy to give the child reader a possibility to enjoy the vicarious, or “frisson of fright safely contained in the fiction” (2012, 127). Of course, the family is safe, incinerators have not been lit that day, and all the three characters march out of the factory at the end, as rubbish, covered in trash.
Moving from verbal violence to purely burlesque violence, we should look at The Witches (Dahl 2016) and its use of fairy tale conventions. At the beginning of the book, the fictive storyteller makes a note to the reader: “In fairy-tales, witches always wear silly black hats and black cloaks, and they ride on broomsticks. But this is not a fairy-tale. This is about real witches.” (1). However, even if the un-fairytaleness is explicitly stated here, the story features a lot of fairy-tale conventions. Grandmamma tells cautionary stories of witches to the unnamed protagonist boy, throughout the first few chapters of the book. The boy keeps asking questions, but instead of a cohesive, continuous story, the reader learns about the witches together with the main character in a series of dialogue-like narratives that are mimicking fairy tale narration (Thacker 2012, 26).
It is worth mentioning, regarding this, that a similar storytelling technique is used in all the three books, on several occasions: Mr Wormwood telling about the trade secrets to his son (Dahl 2016 16-19), Miss Honey telling about Miss Trunchbull to Matilda (189-201), and Grandpa Joe telling about Willy Wonka to Charlie (Dahl 2016, 9-21). The unifying factor is that in all these storytelling passages both parts are on the same side: even if Mr Wormwood is positioned as an antagonist, he does not have antipathy towards his son. Once the oral storytelling comes to an end, and the main plot begins, the witches are introduced, and the violence begins.
The Grand High Witch, leader of all the witches, is a burlesque character. All the physical attributes that readers learn from the oral stories are exaggerated in her appearance and actions. For instance, in a meeting, when one of the rank-and-file witches gasps in disbelief to the High Witch’s plan to wipe out all the children of England, the High Witch burns her alive in front of everyone in the room. The killing
does not happen instantly. In a movie review, Dahl writes about suspense, claiming that writers are playing with their readers’ masochistic instincts: “He is torturing him. And if the torture is expertly applied, the reader will cry out, ’I can’t stand it, not for another moment! Oh, isn’t it wonderful!’” – and he will read on” (Dahl 1964, 16). In fact, Dahl’s description of suspense suits the events in the passage of the incineration in The Witches.
The High Witch’s accent, described as foreign and peculiar, contributes to the burlesque (Dahl 2016, 63). The High Witch begins her spell: “A stupid vitch who answers back / Must burn until her bones are black” (68). She continues with this recital a couple more verses, while the victim is screaming and crying for her to stop. After the ending lines there is only an empty chair left with a smell of burnt flesh: “A vitch who dares to say I’m wrrrong / Vill not be vith us very long!” (69) The High Witch’s speech is transcribed in a way that encourages the reader to play with her accent, and the mood turns into burlesque, or even carnivalesque. The humorous way of speaking is further emphasized when High Witch ends the scene by saying “Frrrizzled like a frrritter, … Cooked like a carrot” (70).
In The Witches the retaliatory violence is implicit, as Worthington brings up:
“the boy/mouse and his grandmother plan to track down all the Witches, use their own potion to turn them into mice and then release cats to kill them” (2016, 128). Also, in the scene of retaliatory violence in the resolution of the main plot, when the witches of England get their punishment, they are turned into mice, but there, no cats are released.
The boy/mouse narrator describes the events as if he were about to see a theatre show:
“My grandmother lifted Bruno and me up so that we wouldn’t miss any of the fun. In her excitement, she jumped up on to her chair so that she could see over the heads of the crowd” (179). In fact, the only violent actions are those of the waiters and chef attacking the mice with whatever equipment they can find nearby. As the boy/mouse narrator puts it: “Only the children in the room were really enjoying it” (180). This is again a similar setting, as discussed above, where Dahl’s display of violent events has an entertaining effect, when the evildoers are punished in a burlesque or festive manner.
As a last aspect of the analysis, I will consider the headmistress in Matilda again (Dahl 2016), Miss Trunchbull, who like the High Witch is not afraid of using physical violence. One of the most striking examples is at the schoolyard, when a girl has dared to come to school with her hair in pigtails:
‘Your mummy’s a twit!’ the Trunchbull bellowed. She pointed a finger the size of a salami at the child’s head and shouted, ‘You look like a rat with a tail coming out of its head!’
‘My m-m-mummy thinks I look lovely, Miss T-T-Trunchbull,’
Amanda stuttered, shaking like a blancmange.
‘I don’t give a tinker’s toot what your mummy thinks!’ the Trunchbull yelled, and with that she lunged forward and grabbed hold of Amanda’s pigtails in her right fist and lifted the girl clear off the ground. Then she started swinging her round and round her head, faster and faster, and Amanda was screaming blue murder and the Trunchbull was yelling, ‘I’ll give you pigtails, you little rat!’ (108)
The reason to quote this passage at length is to both show the dialogue between the characters, and the narration. We are already familiar with the verbally abusive manner of Trunchbull’s speech, but here, unlike in the first classroom appearance where all the pupils stayed silent, Amanda dares to defend herself. The narrator says that Amanda is stuttering and shaking, showing that she is frightened. Miss Trunchbull ignores this completely and continues yelling at her. When Trunchbull then grabs the girl by her pigtails, burlesque and surreal qualities are added to the story. The girl flies over the fence of the playground, bounces off the ground three times and then rests on the grass, but recovers in a couple of minutes and “totters” back to the schoolyard. Miss Trunchbull does not seem to be bothered by the fact that someone at the yard shouts at her “Well thrown, sir!” (110), misgendering her. When Matilda and her friend, Lavender, are discussing the events, Matilda explains why Trunchbull gets away with such actions: “[parents] wouldn’t believe you. … Your story would sound too ridiculous to be believed. … the Trunchbull’s great secret … Make sure everything you do is so completely crazy it’s unbelievable” (111). What Matilda says is true to the readers too; Miss Trunchbull is so overwhelmingly exaggerated here that there is no way they would have difficulties understanding this as burlesque, festive violence, serving merely the effect of entertainment.
Miss Trunchbull is not at all times portrayed as burlesque, though, as in the previous example. The overall setting of Matilda is not as fantasy-like as it is in the other two titles. The realism is less marked in The Witches, already by the existence of witches with magical powers, and Wonka’s Chocolate Factory is so full of miraculous rooms, reminding the reader about Hansel and Gretel’s witch’s cottage and its fairy- tale-like conditions. In Matilda, however, it is not until the last chapters that supernatural events begin to happen; in other respects, the storyworld is rather realistic.
However, as Worthington puts it: “In Dahl’s representation of Miss Trunchbull there is a sadism which, taken out of the context of humour, is truly unpleasant” (2012, 129). Worthington’s description is relevant to the part where “chokey” is presented.
Hortensia, the girl who has told Matilda, and the reader, most of Trunchbull’s evil feats, talks about the chokey: “a very tall but very narrow cupboard. The floor is only ten inches square so you can’t sit down or squat in it. You have to stand. And three of the walls are made of cement with bits of broken glass sticking out all over, so you can’t lean against them” (Dahl 2016, 98). There is nothing ridiculously exaggerated here, nothing supernatural, and this is one of the very few instances of the Dahl’s fiction that feels truly unpleasant. When Hortensia talks about it, it feels more like a legend, but later, Trunchbull threatens a boy with it herself: “you’ll go straight into The Chokey and I shall lock the door and throw the key down the well!” (122).
In conclusion, Roald Dahl uses various fairy tale elements, especially burlesque violence, in his children’s fiction. Even if the antagonists are always punished in his books, the retaliatory violence, which is often exaggerated also in the fairy tale tradition, is not equally prevalent in Dahl’s fiction. The punishment that antagonists are given at the end is not always physical. The cautionary effect is found, as we can see, for instance, with the unlucky endings of the other children on the factory tour.
However, the use of burlesque violence is quite common in his works. As we have seen, violence has generally been declining in children’s fiction, during the recent decades (Oziewicz and Hade 2013). Dahl believed in the effect of the earlier folk tale tradition and its burlesque violence, and did not wish to save the child audience from it. The exaggerated characters, surreal settings, playful use of language, and the effective use of cautionary tales, also contribute to the readers’ entertainment.
However, there are also some cases when the violence lacks the burlesque characteristics, for instance when it looks like Veruca Salt and her family are going to be burned alive, or when Miss Trunchbull shows her sadistic desires. However, such instances of seemingly unmotivated violence are not frequent enough to interrupt the pattern that the books otherwise follow. It is also to be noted, that the Salt family do survive the rubbish chute, and all the pupils in Trunchbull’s school seem to be fine and healthy, despite the efforts of the headmistress. These examples mainly create suspense.
Dahl is playing with the readers’ nerves, building up fear and making us read on.
The verbal violence in Dahl’s fiction seems to be ambivalent. It is either a device to make space for vengeance and, with it, poetic justice, as in Matilda, or it has a burlesque quality, with an entertaining effect, like in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. In Matilda, justice is given to both antagonists, and the parents and headmistress are both replaced by a character that would never be verbally abusive.
There it hardly has a burlesque meaning, but in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory the snappy answers of Wonka, the jolly songs of Oompa Loompas, and other burlesque exaggerations stand out.
Finally, Dahl’s use of violence and the effects of it, seems often to have a cathartic function. When the protagonist is first violated, the emotions of the reader are resolved in the retaliatory actions, when the antagonists are ridiculed or forced to face their end. Dahl’s fiction has been criticised inter alia for its violence, sexism, and promotion of criminal behaviour (Culley 1991). Even if those qualities are present in all the three titles I have been analysing in this essay, it is deducible that most of these charges should be reconsidered. Dahl punishes the evil-doers and cheaters, and his antagonists are either male, female, or non-human. All this goes to show that Dahl does not underestimate his child audience, and one could even say that he continues the socialising fairy tales tradition. All in all, readers are pleased, and the old moral holds true: harm hatch, harm catch.
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