For our Villains Bracket week, a few Lit Hub staffers wrote about their favorite villain from our initial group of 64. Here’s Brittany on Miss Trunchbull from Matilda.
Roald Dahl never met an authority figure he could like. If his canon suggests biography, we can guess he encountered some pretty abusive educators. But I have a strangely soft spot for Agatha Trunchbull, the child-hating sadist who goes up against the wunderkind Matilda.
I can hold space for the fact that not everyone appreciates the company of children. More mystifying in the Trunchbull’s case is her insistence on being around them. Agatha is a true villain because she’s impelled to cruelty; she’s driven only by an urge to harm. There’s no ideology behind her meanness, either (as with the law-loving Javert). Or even a particular want (as with the fashion criminal, Cruella de Vil). If she believes anything, it’s this: the young should be groomed in adverse conditions, and deprived of all positive reinforcement. This is not a coherent philosophy, even if you’re building an army. Agatha would make us eat cake, then give us nothing to live for.
She’s the pettiest possible tyrant, given her tendency to prey on the weakest subjects. Others in this bracket have better matched foes—or easily explained wills to power (Sauron), symbolic fetishes (Patrick Bateman), or simply a job to do (Anton Chigurh). Even other child terrorizers are driven by revenge—see Captain Hook, who has a genuinely pesky adversary in Peter and his flock of feral boys. But not Agatha, whose Olympic-level shot-put javelin expertise ought to place her above bids for suburban English real estate and, um, baby torture. For these reasons, she is a singular evil. Amazingly, apex awful.
And here’s Brittany’s full bracket:
