 What best summarizes Matilda’s attitude?
The best that could be said for Matilda Penshaws was that she was something of a paradox. She was thirty-three years old, certainly not aged when you consider the fact that the female life expectancy is now up in the sixties, but the lines were beginning to etch their permanent paths across her face and now she needed certain remedial undergarments at which she would have scoffed ten or even five years ago. This, in itself, was not unusual—but Matilda was so completely wrapped up in the romantic fallacy of her day that she sought a prince charming, a faithful Don Juan, a man who had been everywhere and tasted of every worldly pleasure and who now wanted to sit on a porch and talk about it all to Matilda. The fact that in all probability such a man did not exist disturbed Matilda not in the least. She had been known to say that there are over a billion men in the world, a goodly percentage of whom are eligible bachelors, and that the right one would come along simply because she had been waiting for him. Matilda, you see, had patience. Matilda had received her A.B. from exclusive Ursula Johns College and Radcliff had yielded her Masters degree, yet Matilda was an avid follower of the pen pal columns. She would read them carefully and then read them again, looking for the masculine names which, through a system known only to Matilda, had an affinity to her own. To the gentlemen upon whom these names were affixed, Matilda would write, and she often told her mother, the widow Penshaws, that it was in this way she would find her husband. The first thing the widow Penshaws did was to take Matilda's left hand in her own and examine the next-to-the-last finger. "But, Matilda, that's your fifth broken engagement in three years. Matilda admired her mother's use of the word osmosis, but she found nothing which was not objectionable about being unaware of the impact of love.
 She’s naive, and a romantic who craves excitement.
 She’s too easily trusting of strangers and the unknown.  She is a lonely, unhappy person looking for an outlet via the Pen Pals column.  She’s naive, and doesn’t understand relationship.s  She’s naive, and a romantic who craves excitement.