Chapter 5 - The Hundred Dresses - I
Writer of the story: Eleanor EstesThinking about the text:
Question 1: How is Wanda seen as different by the other girls? How do they treat her?
Answer: Wanda is a Polish girl who has settled in America with her parents. She lived in Boggins Heights. She came to school in the same faded blue dress everyday with her feet always caked with mud. Her last name is quite funny and difficult to pronounce for her classmates. Her appearance was not perfect to be in a higher class. So all the students made fun of her and teased her after the school hours. After being teased over her tolerance, she claimed to have had a hundred dresses in her closet.
Question 2: How does Wanda feel about the dresses game? Why does she say that she has a hundred dresses?
Answer: Wanda feels very embarrassed but remains silent in the class. She doesn’t talk to anyone and sits on the back bench with rough boys so that nobody can give attention to her. She is deeply hurt but never complains about it. To avoid their taunts and humiliation, Wanda says that she has a hundred dresses and sixty pairs of matching shoes in her closet. Later on, she draws all of them on paper for the drawing competition.
Question 3: Why does Maddie stand by and does not do anything? How is she different from Peggy? (Was Peggy’s friendship important to Maddie? Why? Which lines in the text tell you this?)
Answer: Peggy is the most popular girl in the class and Maddie is her closest friend. Though, Maddie is poor, Peggy never teases her as she does with Wanda so Maddie is afraid of losing her friendship. That’s why, she does not risk to annoy Peggy and prefers to be silent. The line, “Peggy was the best-liked girl in the whole room. Peggy could not possibly do anything that was really wrong” illustrates this.
Question 4: What does Miss Mason think of Wanda’s drawings? What do the children think of them? How do you know?
Answer: Miss Mason is very impressed with Wanda’s drawings. She considers them really beautiful and worthy of winning individually. The children are also impressed by the drawing skills of Wanda that they all applaud and whistle when she wins among the girls.
Additional questions:
Question 1: Why didn’t Maddie ask Peggy to stop teasing Wanda? What was she afraid of?
Answer: Maddie didn’t ask Peggy to stop teasing Wanda because Peggy was the most popular girl in the school. She was a nice girl but when it came to Wanda she behaved differently, otherwise she helped everyone in trouble. Though, she wants Peggy to stop teasing Wanda, she didn’t ask her to do so as she was afraid of being the next target of such taunts and teasing.
Question 2: In what way was Wanda different from the other children?
Answer: Wanda Petronski was a polish girl whose parents had settled down in America. She was a source of fun because of her last name which made her different from others because Americans did not have such names and it was difficult to pronounce.
She came to school alone and her feet were covered with mud. She preferred to sit alone in the last in the class. She had only one blue dress which was faded but claimed of having a hundred dresses. These qualities make her different from other children.
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