“Matilda” by Roald Dahl: Matilda converses with “the voice”

Matilda, a small, but extremely precocious girl, is having a private, in-person conversation with her elementary school teacher, Miss Honey.

“You are so much wiser than your years, my dear,’ Miss Honey went on, ‘that it quite staggers me. Although you look like a child, you are not really a child at all because your mind and your powers of reasoning seem to be fully grown-up…

“Up to now,’Miss Honey went on, ‘I have found it impossible to talk to anyone about my problems…Any courage I had was knocked out of me when I was young. But now, all of a sudden I have a sort of desperate wish to tell everything to somebody…

“Matilda became very alert. The voice she was hearing was surely crying out for help. It must be. It had to be.

“Then the voice spoke again. “Have some more tea, it said. ‘I think there is still a drop left.’

"Matilda nodded…(1, pp. 195-196) [Miss Honey proceeds to tell her life story…]

Comment: It would have been more natural to say Miss Honey was surely crying out for help…Then Miss Honey spoke again, “Have some more tea, she said.

The redundant use of “the voice” makes me think that someone (the author, in his creative process) was hearing voices, which, in nonpsychotic persons, would very likely be voices of alternate personalities. Assuming that Dahl was not trying to portray Matilda as having multiple personality, then he may have had multiple personality trait.

1. Roald Dahl. Matilda. New York, Viking, 1988.