The Hundred DressesEleanor Estes · First Flight, Chapter 5 · CBSE Class 10
Wanda Petronski, a poor Polish immigrant girl, tells her classmates she has a hundred dresses at home. They mock her. She says nothing, never cries, never accuses. Then she wins the drawing competition with a hundred dress designs — each one beautiful — and disappears from school. The letter she sends afterwards shames everyone.
Author
Eleanor Estes
Book
First Flight
Type
Short story
Central theme
Bullying & bystander guilt
Summary — paragraph by paragraph
Wanda Petronski — the girl who sits in the corner
Wanda Petronski is a Polish immigrant girl in an American school. She is poor, always wears the same faded blue dress, and has a difficult Polish surname that her classmates find hard to pronounce. She sits in the corner of the room — away from the other children — and is mostly ignored until one day she tells the class that she has a hundred dresses at home, all lined up in her closet. The claim is so obviously untrue that it invites mockery.
The game — and Maddie's silence
Led by Peggy, the most popular girl in class, the other girls begin to 'play a game' with Wanda. They crowd around her and ask about her hundred dresses, adding more details each time — shoes, hats, velvet dresses. Wanda quietly confirms each detail. She always answers politely, never cries, never fights back. The real game is mockery, and everyone knows it. Maddie, Peggy's best friend, is uncomfortable. She knows what is happening is wrong. But she is poor herself and afraid that if she speaks up, Peggy will mock her next. So she stays silent.
Wanda's drawings — and the class realises too late
The school holds a drawing competition. Wanda enters a hundred designs for dresses — each one different, each one beautiful. They are clearly the work of imagination and real artistic talent. Wanda wins the competition. The class is astonished. Only then do some of the children begin to understand what Wanda meant by her hundred dresses. They existed in her mind and on paper — not in a closet. While the class was mocking her, she was creating them.
Wanda is gone — and the letter
The next day, Wanda is absent. Then a letter arrives from her father explaining that Wanda will not be returning to school. He has moved the family to a city where people do not make fun of names. The class is struck with guilt. Peggy and Maddie go to Wanda's old house — she is already gone. Maddie is haunted by what she did and did not do. She resolves that she will never again stay silent when she sees someone being treated unkindly.
Wanda's letter — a final, generous act
Shortly after, a letter arrives from Wanda. She addresses the whole class and especially Peggy and Maddie. She says they may keep the drawings of the dresses — the drawings belong to them now. She describes the green dress as being 'for the girl with the blue eyes and black hair', which matches Maddie exactly, and the red one for Peggy. It is a letter of pure generosity — from a girl who was mocked, to the people who mocked her. It leaves Maddie overwhelmed with guilt, regret, and also a kind of wonder at Wanda's grace.
Character Analysis
Wanda Petronski
Protagonist — the outsiderHer dignity
Wanda never cries, never fights back, and never accuses her tormentors. She simply answers every question politely and walks away. This composure is not weakness — it is extraordinary dignity. She refuses to give her mockers the reaction they want. Her silence is a form of self-respect.
Her inner world
While her classmates mock her claims of a hundred dresses, Wanda is quietly drawing them all — each one different, each one beautiful. Her hundred dresses are real: they exist in her imagination and in her drawings. The class was too busy mocking the claim to see the creativity behind it.
Her generosity
Wanda's letter to the class after she leaves is one of the most moving moments in the story. She gives the drawings to the people who hurt her, personalising them for Maddie and Peggy. This is not weakness or naivety — it is a conscious act of grace. She chooses generosity over resentment, and this choice shames her classmates far more than any accusation could.
Maddie
Secondary protagonist — the witness with a conscienceHer guilt
Maddie knows the teasing of Wanda is wrong. She feels uncomfortable every time the 'game' happens. But she says nothing. She is poor herself and afraid that if she stands up for Wanda, she will become the next target. Her silence makes her complicit in the bullying even though she never directly participates in it.
Her resolution
After Wanda leaves, Maddie is haunted by what she failed to do. She decides she will never again remain silent when she sees someone being mistreated. This resolution makes Maddie the story's moral focus: she represents the reader, who may not be the bully but may, like Maddie, be the person who sees injustice and says nothing.
What she represents
Maddie is the story's moral argument — that silence in the face of cruelty is itself a form of cruelty. The story does not let her off the hook because she was not the ringleader. Her guilt is real because her inaction had real consequences. But her resolution gives her character an arc: she grows.
Peggy
The ringleaderHer role
Peggy is popular, confident, and the one who starts the teasing. She is not presented as a monster — she rationalises her behaviour as harmless fun. When Wanda leaves, Peggy is uncomfortable but tells Maddie she was only trying to have fun, not to be cruel. This self-justification is very human and very honest.
What she shows
Peggy represents how bullying often works: not through obvious cruelty but through social dynamics. She is popular, Wanda is not. The 'game' seems harmless from the inside. Peggy never considers what it feels like to be Wanda. That failure of imagination is the story's central indictment.
Themes
Bullying and the damage of social exclusion
The teasing of Wanda is the story's central subject. Eleanor Estes shows how bullying does not need to be physical or even overtly cruel — the 'game' the girls play is disguised as curiosity, even friendliness. But its effect on Wanda is clear: her family eventually leaves the town because of it. The story asks us to look honestly at what we dismiss as 'harmless fun'.
The bystander's guilt — silence as complicity
Maddie's story is the story's moral heart. She is not the bully — but she watches and says nothing. The story argues that this makes her complicit. Her guilt after Wanda leaves is not disproportionate; it is exactly proportionate to the real harm her silence helped enable. The bystander, the story argues, bears moral responsibility.
Empathy and the failure of imagination
The class's failure to understand Wanda is a failure of imagination. They cannot imagine what it is like to be poor, foreign, and different. They cannot imagine that the hundred dresses might be real in any meaningful sense. Wanda's drawings reveal what they failed to see. The story calls on its readers to exercise the empathy that the characters lack.
Generosity and grace in the face of cruelty
Wanda's final letter is the most powerful moment in the story. Rather than accusing those who hurt her, she gives them gifts — personalised, beautiful gifts drawn by her own hand. Her generosity is not sentimental; it is a form of moral authority. She has refused to be diminished by what was done to her, and her grace in the end diminishes her tormentors far more than any accusation.
Extract-Based Questions
The hundred-dresses claim and Maddie's vow are the most tested extracts. Know both in detail.
"Wanda Petronski. Most of the children didn't have names like that. They had names easy to say, like Thomas, Smith, or Allen. There was one boy named Bounce, a nickname, but that was easy to say too."
Q1. What does this passage suggest about the reasons for Wanda's social exclusion?
The passage identifies Wanda's foreign name as the first marker of her difference. The contrast with names like 'Thomas, Smith, or Allen' — common Anglo-Saxon names — shows that her Polishness sets her apart immediately. The detail that even a nickname like 'Bounce' counts as easy because it is English (or at least familiar) shows how arbitrary these boundaries are. The children's discomfort with Wanda begins with something as superficial as the sound of her name. This is how social exclusion often works: through small, seemingly innocent differences that become the basis for othering.
"I have a hundred dresses at home. A hundred dresses, all lined up in my closet."
Q1. Why does Wanda's claim about the hundred dresses invite mockery? What is the truth behind the claim?
Wanda's claim invites mockery because it is obviously implausible. She is poor and wears the same faded dress every day. The claim of a hundred dresses in a closet seems like a desperate lie made by someone too ashamed to admit poverty. But the mockery reveals the class's failure of imagination. The truth is that the hundred dresses exist — in Wanda's mind and in the beautiful drawings she has been creating. Her claim is not a lie; it is a description of her inner life, her creative world, the dresses she imagines and draws. The class is too busy laughing to see this.
"She had made a little plan, a sort of solemn vow to herself… she would never stand by and say nothing again."
Q1. What vow does Maddie make, and what does it reveal about her character?
Maddie vows that she will never again remain silent when she sees someone being treated unkindly. This resolution comes from her genuine guilt over what happened to Wanda — she knows that her silence made her complicit. The vow reveals that Maddie has genuine moral sensitivity; she is not a bully by nature. But it also shows that she needed this experience to understand the consequences of passivity. Her resolution is the story's moral message, directed at the reader: witnessing injustice and saying nothing is itself a moral failure.
Short-Answer Questions (3 marks)
Name the character and the specific detail. 'Wanda was bullied' is too vague — say how, by whom, and what happened as a result.
Q1. Why did Wanda sit in the corner of the room, away from the other children?
Wanda sat in the corner because she was different from the other children in ways that made her an outsider: she had a Polish surname that was hard to pronounce, she was poor and wore the same faded blue dress every day, and she did not have the kind of easy social belonging that the other children had. The corner was where she was placed — both physically and socially. It is also significant that the corner was near the window, which may suggest her longing to be elsewhere.
Q2. What was the 'game' that Peggy and the other girls played with Wanda?
The 'game' was a form of mockery disguised as curiosity. Whenever Wanda was alone, the girls would crowd around her and ask about her hundred dresses — adding details like shoes, hats, and velvet dresses. Wanda always answered quietly and politely, confirming each detail. The girls found this hilarious because they believed she was lying. In reality, they were mocking a poor girl for claiming something she did not have. The 'game' was never harmless fun — it was sustained humiliation.
Q3. What did Wanda's drawings reveal about her? How did the class react?
Wanda's drawings — a hundred dress designs, each different and beautiful — revealed that she was a gifted artist with a rich imaginative life. Her hundred dresses existed in her mind and on paper, not in a closet, but they were real creations. The class was astonished. Wanda won the drawing competition. Only after seeing the drawings did some children begin to understand what Wanda had meant — and to feel the weight of what they had done.
Q4. How does Wanda's final letter reflect her character?
Wanda's letter is a gesture of pure generosity. She writes to say that Peggy and Maddie may keep the drawings of the dresses, personalising them — the green dress for Maddie, the red for Peggy. She bears no apparent resentment. This is remarkable given what was done to her. The letter shows that Wanda refuses to be defined by how she was treated. Her grace in the face of cruelty is her most powerful quality — and it shames her classmates far more effectively than any accusation could.
Long-Answer Questions (5 marks)
Write 8–10 sentences. Board papers frequently ask about either Wanda's character or Maddie's guilt — both are included above.
Q1. Maddie is not the bully, yet she carries the most guilt after Wanda leaves. Is Maddie's guilt justified? What does her story teach us about the bystander's role in bullying?
Maddie's guilt is entirely justified — and the story makes this case carefully and honestly. She is not the ringleader; she did not start the teasing of Wanda and never directly mocked her. But she watched it happen, repeatedly, over a long period of time, and said nothing. In Eleanor Estes's view — and in the logic of the story — this silence is a form of participation.
Maddie's reasons for staying silent are understandable. She is poor herself and afraid that if she stands up for Wanda, she will become Peggy's next target. This is a very realistic fear. It is the same calculation that keeps most bystanders silent: the cost of speaking up seems too high.
But the story argues that this calculation is wrong — or at least incomplete. Maddie's silence had real consequences. Wanda's family left the town because people 'make fun of funny names and such things'. Maddie's inaction contributed to this outcome. Her guilt, after Wanda leaves, reflects her dawning understanding of this.
What makes Maddie the story's moral centre is that she feels this guilt fully and converts it into resolution. She vows that she will never again remain silent when she sees someone being treated unkindly. This is not an empty promise — it is a genuine moral growth, earned through painful self-examination.
Maddie represents the reader. Most of us are not bullies. But most of us have, at some point, been bystanders — watching something wrong and saying nothing. The story's argument is simple and uncomfortable: the bystander is not neutral. Silence in the face of cruelty enables it. And the awareness of this — Maddie's awareness — is the beginning of moral seriousness.
Marking Breakdown
5 marks: 1 for establishing Maddie's guilt as justified, 1 for her reasons for silence (fear), 1 for the real consequences of that silence, 1 for her resolution and moral growth, 1 for the broader argument about bystander responsibility.
Grammar in this chapter
The story's emotional weight comes partly from its careful use of tense and reported thought — two common board editing topics.