Miss Honey’s cottage represents freedom and the price people sometimes must pay for their liberty. The cottage, which Miss Honey rents for pennies a week, is so tiny she must bend down to enter, and to Matilda it appears like a mysterious fairy-tale house. It has no running water and no furniture but provides the shelter of escape for the young teacher, who has run away from her cruel aunt, Miss Trunchbull. It’s in this cottage that Miss Honey and Matilda talk frankly and begin to bond as friends. In its lovely setting in the woods, the cottage also symbolizes the yet-unfulfilled promise of the teacher’s young life.

Matilda’s first school classes take place at Crunchem Hall. Its name, which suggests a place that crunches kids down, is a warning that education takes a back seat to mindless discipline. Ruled over by the tyrannical Miss Trunchbull, the Hall becomes a place of terror whenever she’s around. Crunchem Hall is the stage for most of the story’s action. It’s also where Matilda begins to test the powers of her mind. The school, like Miss Honey and The Red House, is saved by the end of the story because Trunchbull is vanquished.