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Miss Trunchbull is the story’s primary antagonist, and the headmistress of Matilda’s school. She is also Miss Honey’s legal guardian (as Miss Honey’s father’s sister). She has fraudulently captured all of Miss Honey’s inheritance from Miss Honey’s deceased parents, as well as Miss Honey’s paycheck. Dahl describes her in fearsome terms, as being a brute of a woman, and as someone who despises children. She is rude, insulting, and extraordinarily abusive toward the children at the school. Her primary job in life seems to be inflicting terror and torture on children, and on Miss Honey. She punishes the children with her “hammer,” and by putting them in a torture chamber called “The Chokey.” She picks up students then throws them like she did the hammer in the Olympic games? Miss Trunchbull is not intelligent, and she is fearful of things such as newts and ghosts that shine a spotlight on her evil ways. Miss Trunchbull is ultimately a coward who inflicts intimidation on everyone around her to make herself feel powerful. When she is subjected to a similar havoc to that she has wreaked on the lives of so many, she can’t handle it, and like Mr. Wormwood, runs away.

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