The Hundred Dresses Part 1 NCERT Solutions Class 10 PDF

Ans: Wanda sat in the seat next to the last seat, in the last row, in Room Thirteen. She sat there because she came from Boggins Heights and her feet were usually caked with dry mud. It was a corner where the "rough boys" who didn't get good marks sat, so she could remain unnoticed.

Ans: Wanda said she had a hundred dresses to protect her self-respect from the mocking girls. She was actually referring to the one hundred beautiful drawings of dresses she had created for the drawing contest, though the other girls took it literally to mean real clothes.

Ans: Maddie is embarrassed because she herself is poor and wears hand-me-down clothes. Every time Peggy teases Wanda about dresses, Maddie feels guilty and fears that if they stop teasing Wanda, they might start targeting Maddie next.

Ans: Wanda was extremely quiet and rarely said anything at all. Nobody had ever heard her laugh out loud. She just sat silently in her corner.

Ans: Peggy was the most popular, pretty, and wealthy girl in school. Maddie was her inseparable best friend who was poor. Together, they started the "dresses game" to mock Wanda.

Ans: For the girls, the contest consisted of designing dresses. For the boys, it was about designing motorboats. Everyone expected Peggy to win the girls' medal.

Ans: Maddie started writing a note asking Peggy to stop teasing Wanda. However, she tore it up because she imagined herself as the new target, with Peggy asking where Maddie got the dress she was currently wearing (which was actually Peggy's old dress).

Ans: It was a faded blue dress that didn't hang right. It was clean, but it looked as though it had never been ironed properly.

Ans: They noticed her absence on Wednesday. They had waited for Wanda outside school to have "fun" with her, which made them late for class, leading them to realize she wasn't there.

Ans: Peggy was rich, pretty, and popular. She wasn't inherently cruel—she protected kids from bullies—but she was insensitive towards Wanda, thinking her claims of a hundred dresses were a lie. Maddie, on the other hand, was poor and wore handed-down clothes. She was highly empathetic and felt terrible about the teasing. However, Maddie was a coward; she lacked the courage to stop Peggy because she was paralyzed by the fear of becoming the next victim.

Ans: When the class entered Room Thirteen, they stopped short and gasped. Spread all over the room, on every window sill and cornice, were brilliant, lavish drawings of a hundred beautiful dresses. Miss Mason announced that while most girls submitted one or two sketches, one girl had submitted a hundred. That girl was Wanda Petronski, who was declared the winner. The entire class, including Peggy, was left in awe of her immense talent.

Ans: The story shows that bullying isn't always physical violence; it can be psychological teasing. Peggy and Maddie waited every day just to mock Wanda. This constant humiliation isolated Wanda, making her sit in the back with rough boys and eventually forcing her to stop coming to school. It teaches us that casual jokes can inflict deep emotional scars on someone who is already marginalized.

Ans: Maddie knew exactly how much Wanda was hurting because Maddie was poor too. She hated the "dresses game." Yet, she stood by silently and let her best friend torment Wanda. Her silence allowed the bullying to continue. By not speaking up out of selfish fear, Maddie became an accomplice to the emotional cruelty, proving that doing nothing is just as bad as participating in the bullying.

Ans: We learn the power of silent resilience and channeling pain into creativity. Wanda didn't fight back with words or anger. Instead, she used her talent to draw the very "hundred dresses" they mocked her for. Her brilliant success was the ultimate, dignified reply to her tormentors.

Ans: Peggy said this at the end of the chapter. She was humbled and genuinely amazed by Wanda's extraordinary drawing skills, realizing that Wanda was far more talented than she was.

Ans: It seemed absurd because Wanda came to school every day wearing the same heavy, muddy shoes. Claiming to have 60 pairs of shoes lined up in her closet contradicted her daily poverty-stricken appearance.

Ans: Maddie was poor. She wore old, hand-me-down clothes that her mother ingeniously altered with new trimmings so that nobody in Room Thirteen would recognize them.

Ans: In that American school, children had easy names like Thomas, Smith, or Allen. "Wanda Petronski" sounded foreign, long, and funny to them, which made her an easy target for discrimination.