Matilda

The Initiation to Consumption

Social linguists work on a basis that language as a system interacts with society and reflects the ideologies of the society in which it inhabits. Derrida mentions this in passing when discussing speech and writing as parts which are encapsulated by the notion of a larger “presence”. Extending this school of thought, books or publications as the concretized form of language can be considered as emblems of, or conduits to the culture of the world beyond the text. With this, the symbolic consideration of books Matilda reads would be illuminating with regard to her immediate environment.

Mrs Wormwood’s cookbook as a symbol works on two levels. The cookbook as a metonym of its owner first exemplifies the highly material nature of the world that Matilda inhabits.

In recurring episodes in the story, Mrs Wormwood is depicted as “a large platinum-blonde woman (who) gaz[es] rapturously at the TV screen” (94). As a soap-opera addict, Mrs. Wormwood’s visual consumption of the soap operas allows us to read her as a projection of unthinking, excessive consumerism. Her “heavy make-up and…unfortunate bulging figure(s) where the flesh appears to be strapped in all around the body to prevent it from falling out” is quite clearly the result of her attempt to emulate the characters in the program (27). Veblen describes “conspicuous consumerism” as an interaction between the working and leisure classes. According to him, the working classes’s desire to emulate the leisure class motivates their consumerist desire.

Mrs. Wormwood’s personification of the excesses of consumerism causes her to ape what is presented on the screen. At the same time, as she consumes the ideologies and products advertised on television programs she participates only in consumerist leisure activities. Cumulatively, the very appearance of her body, her gaudy make-up and fatness becomes emblematic of a mindless consumer of the capitalistic lifestyle.

Extending this strand of thought, the specificity of the book that Matilda first reads—“Easy Cooking”: cookbook works at a metaphorical level wherein the literal notion of consumption is merged with the ideological concept of capitalist consumption. The cookbook as a metonym of Mrs. Wormwood is represents her consumerist values. In her act of reading, Matilda consumes not just the words on the page but is also absorbed into a textual world that is essentially about consumption. Accordingly, it was only after “she had read [Easy Cooking] from cover to cover and had learnt all the recipes by heart, (that) she decided she wanted something more interesting” (11). Therefore, more than initiating Matilda to the need to consume, the cookbook introduces Matilda to economic notions of ‘unlimited wants’. For whilst Matilda ‘devours’ the contents of the cookbook, the diet of TV dinners the family lives on is a far cry from the meals presented by the book. In being dissatisfied with Easy Cooking, Matilda is in fact frustrated by her desire to fulfill intellectual and gastronomical wants, a throwback to early economists’ theories of ‘unlimited desires’.

In summation, Mrs. Wormwood’s cookbook can thus be seen not just as a symbol of consumerism but the recipe, emblematic of the combination of factors that results in Matilda being subsumed by consumerism.