Matilda Wormwood's Parenting Styles Revealed In The Film Matilda

In the movie Matilda, directed by Danny DeVito (1996), Matilda Wormwood is a bright, young girl who lacks love and attention from her parents. During one of the first scenes of the movie, Matilda is shown, at age 4, mustering up the courage to ask her father for a book, as she has already read every magazine in the house. Her father simply responds, “A book? What do you need a book for?” Then he proceeds to tell her that there is a good television in the living room, so there is not a need to read. Matilda gets up the next morning, gets herself ready, and waits for her parents leave. As her mother, father, and brother leave the house, her mother tells Matilda that if she gets hungry there are “fish fingers in the microwave.” Matilda promptly

Many clues of this can be found throughout the scene I have chosen. When Matilda asks her father for a book, he says no because they have a television set. He does give a reason; however, he uses fallacious reasoning to deem getting a book for his daughter unnecessary. This is an example of authoritarian parenting. The oddly, strict rule of no books with a lack explanation of why I believe may be due to the Wormwoods not want their daughter to be independent. If Matilda can read big books, then she may be able to figure out from the outside world that her parents are not perfect. She might become smarter than her parents, even though she already is at the age of four, and that frightens them. The Wormwoods have rules they just are not reasonable do they enforce them. When Matilda’s father says no to the book, Matilda goes out searching for one. She has no guidance from her parents on where to go nor is she given the resources. This aspect of the scene shows the uninvolved characteristics of her parent’s parenting style. As her family walks out the front door, leaving the four-year-old home alone, they just let her know where to get the food that she is expected to cook for herself. She then proceeds to walk ten blocks to the library by herself without her parents knowing, and they do not really care. Matilda is expected to take care of herself therefore she