Just for nostalgia, I had a flick through my childhood copy of Matilda over the weekend, and I found myself taking a surprising interest in Mrs Wormwood. I think there's substantially more depth to her than there is to her crooked car-dealer husband, and it got me thinking about who she as a character and speculating about what her childhood might have been like. The conclusions I drew, from the admittedly very little evidence the author gives us, is that she's someone who like Matilda was born with really extraordinary intellectual capabilities, but unlike Matilda failed to ever realise them.
There's a few things that make me think that, but the bit that stands out most is her comment to Miss Honey that 'you chose books, and I chose looks'. The word 'chose' is an interesting choice. Mrs Wormwood frames it not that Miss Honey was good at books and she herself wasn't, but that she chose to focus on glamorising herself up at the expense of her education. The suggestion is that for Mrs Wormwood, choosing books instead of looks would have been a possibility for her and she might have been good at it. For whatever reason, the younger version of Mrs Wormwood decided that choosing looks was a better option. The way she says it to Miss Honey, she makes it sound as though she's happy with her choice, and maybe that's what she tells herself - but there are enough moments in the book to make it seem as though she really isn't.
Usually, when we see Mr and Mrs Wormwood together, Mrs Wormwood is snappy and impatient. That's normally directed at Matilda, but she doesn't have contempt for Matilda in the way her husband does. In fact, at some moments she's quite honest with Matilda, such as when Matilda says about Mr Wormwood accidentally dyeing his hair blonde, 'Daddy does do some silly things sometimes, doesn't he?' Her mother sighs and says, 'I'm afraid men are not always as clever as they think they are. You will learn that when you get a bit older, my girl.' This says quite a lot about their marriage, as it's not something that a woman who was wildly in love with her husband would say to their child. It suggests that actually she's really not in love with Harry Wormwood anymore (and perhaps never has been), and finds it intensely irritating how he believes himself to be incredibly intelligent and clever when he very clearly isn't. It's the same when Matilda glues the hat to his head - she's not sympathetic to him at all, she doesn't consider in the slightest how embarrassed he might be feeling, she doesn't make any attempt to think about how it could have happened. Mr Wormwood doesn't like his daughter because he's threatened by her intelligence. For Mrs Wormwood, it's something different - she doesn't really like anyone in her family. She's an unfulfilled housewife who could have done a lot better, and she blames her husband and children for her lack of satisfaction.
Mrs Wormwood has two key interests - bingo, and television soap operas. This says a lot as well, because both are escapism. In the soap she's watching when Miss Honey comes to visit, it appears that the plot of the episode is a woman getting engaged to a very rich man who she's wildly in love with. The life of the soap opera character seems to be what Mrs Wormwood thought would happen to her when she chose looks instead of books - that she'd be swept off her feet by a very rich man and live a glamorous lifestyle forever, and she ended up married to a dodgy car salesman who patronises and disrespects her and is wanted by the police into the bargain. As for the bingo, it says something about her desires. Playing bingo means she can reasonably hope to achieve something and feel good about herself, but in a way that doesn't really involve challenging herself - she's long since forgotten how to do that. Whereas for Matilda, she actually likes challenging herself.
I think from the perspective of an adult, Mrs Wormwood serves as a cautionary tale for Matilda - that most things in the brain are 'use it or lose it', and if you don't nurture the special gifts you were born with you'll one day realise you don't have them anymore. It also emphasises the importance of characters like Miss Honey and Mrs Phelps - perhaps Mrs Wormwood didn't have people like them in her life when she was little. It's not enough to be extraordinary, you also have to have encouragement. If she hadn't met them, Matilda could very easily have never used her amazing brain for anything good and just ended up turning into her mother.
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