The Necklace · Class 10 English · Footprints Without Feet: 135 MCQs with answers

A petty clerk in the office of the Board of Education

Which is why an invitation from the Minister was such an achievement.

Continuously

It is used of her suffering.

Frocks and jewels — and she had neither

The story says flatly that she loved only those things.

She threw it spitefully on the table and asked what he supposed she wanted with it

Instead of being delighted, as her husband had hoped.

That she had nothing suitable to wear

Her husband had not thought of it at all.

Four hundred francs

She named it in a hesitating voice.

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She had no jewel to wear and feared a poverty-stricken look

She said she would rather not go to the party at all.

She brought out a large jewel-case, opened it and told her to choose

The generosity is complete and immediate.

The prettiest of all — elegant, gracious, smiling and full of joy

All the men noticed her and wanted to be presented.

About four o'clock in the morning

Her husband had been half asleep for four hours.

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In the folds of the dress and cloak, the pockets, everywhere in the flat

They could not find it anywhere.

That they must replace the jewel

He was, the story says, older by five years when he said it.

That her own necklace was false, worth at most five hundred francs

She is touched, and takes both Matilda's hands as she says it.

By a mistake of destiny, into a household of clerks

It is how she sees herself, and the story adopts her view to begin with.

She had no dowry, no expectations and no way of being introduced to one

So she allowed herself to marry a petty clerk instead.

She was simple, but she was unhappy

There is nothing vicious in her, and nothing contented either.

The shabby walls and the worn chairs of her apartment

She felt herself born for delicacies and luxuries.

A covered dish from which soup is served at the table

Her husband uncovers it with a delighted air.

She suffered so much afterwards that she wept for whole days

And yet she kept going back.

The Minister of Public Instruction and Madame George Ramponneau

It asked for the company of M. and Mme Loisel at the Minister's residence.

Monday evening, 18 January

The card gives the date and the place exactly.

That she never goes out, that it is select, and that few employees are invited

And that she would see the whole official world there.

The dress she wears to the theatre

It seemed very pretty to him, and the suggestion produced tears.

He had saved exactly that sum to buy a gun

The gun was for hunting parties with friends the next summer.

Join friends who went to shoot larks on Sundays

It is the only pleasure of his own that the story gives him.

That she should have it, and should try to get a pretty dress

No argument, and no mention of the gun.

1 and 2 only

The gun is never mentioned again in the whole story.

They were modest, with a flat, a servant and savings; real poverty comes later

Matilda's suffering at the start is comparison, not want.

Matilda is not unhappy because she has little, but because she imagines much

The opening should name the cause of the unhappiness, not just describe it.

M. Loisel — he had saved for a gun to shoot larks with friends

Mme Forestier is a convent schoolmate, and Matilda has a servant, not a job.

A discontented wife is offered exactly what she wants, and it costs her husband his savings

The necklace is borrowed in the next section.

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Content 3 · Expression 2 · Accuracy 1. Content should include at least six of: the error of destiny and the family of clerks; the lack of dowry and prospects; the marriage to a petty clerk in the Board of Education; 'simple, but unhappy'; the continuous suffering and the sense of being born for luxury; the shabby walls…

He had secured a card of a kind rarely given to employees

He wanted it because his wife never went out.

Her husband's — he told her to ask Mme Forestier

He cried out that they were being stupid, and she gave a cry of joy.

Bracelets, a rope of pearls and a Venetian cross in gold and stones

She tried them at the glass and could not decide.

Her hands trembled, and she was ecstatic when she put it on

Then she asked, anxiously, whether she might borrow this and only this.

She agreed at once, without asking any questions

Neither woman asks a single question, which matters at the end.

Half asleep in a little salon with three other gentlemen since midnight

Their wives were enjoying themselves very much too.

So that the women in rich furs would not see her modest wraps

The poverty of the wraps clashed with the elegance of the ball dress.

Call a cab and have her stay for it

She would not listen and went rapidly down the steps.

In one of the old carriages seen in Paris only after nightfall

They had first walked towards the river, hopeless and shivering.

She took off the wraps before the glass for a last look at herself

The last sentence of the happiest evening of her life.

1 and 3 only

She tried bracelets, pearls and a Venetian cross first.

The story never says where it went; she felt it as they came out

Her husband guesses it must be in the cab, but nobody knows.

Matilda gets everything she has ever wanted, on loan, for four hours

The irony of borrowed happiness is the subject of the whole section.

The black satin box — where the diamonds were hidden from casual view

She borrowed the necklace, wore modest wraps, and danced in the ballroom.

It delivers the triumph and the disaster in the same few hours

The consequences occupy the whole of the next section.

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Content 3 · Expression 2 · Accuracy 1. Content should follow the sequence and include at least seven of: her anxiety at having no jewel; the flowers refused and her reason; the husband's idea and Mme Forestier; the jewel-case and 'choose'; the bracelets, pearls and Venetian cross; the question about anything more; the…

Neither of them had noticed its number

They ask each other, and neither had taken it.

He dressed again and walked the whole route they had taken on foot

He returned at seven having found nothing.

The police, the cab offices, and an advertisement offering a reward

In the evening he came back pale, having discovered nothing.

That she had broken the clasp and was having the necklace repaired

Its purpose was to give them time.

In a shop of the Palais-Royal

A chaplet of diamonds that seemed to them exactly like the one lost.

Thirty-six thousand francs, though valued at forty thousand

Both figures are given in the story.

Eighteen thousand francs inherited from his father, and the rest borrowed

He made ruinous promises and took money from usurers.

Money-lenders, especially those who lend at a high rate of interest

The whole race of lenders, as the story puts it.

Coldly, saying only that it should have been returned sooner

She might have needed it, she says.

They sent away the maid and moved to rooms in an attic

And Matilda took on every household task herself.

Carried the refuse down and the water up, resting at each landing

She also washed dishes and linen and haggled to the last sou.

Evenings on merchants' books, and nights copying at five sous a page

A sou was a coin of very low value.

Strong, hard and old — with red hands, untidy hair and a loud voice

She swilled the floors down with great pails of water.

Sat by the window remembering the ball where she was admired

'How little it takes to ruin somebody or rescue them.'

Her friend failed to know her, and was astonished at the familiarity

Ten years are measured in one failure of recognition.

1 and 3 only

She did not open it, which is why the truth waits ten years.

Ten years of hard work have changed her completely

She is astonished to be addressed so familiarly by a common-looking woman.

She never opened the case, and learns the truth only ten years later

Matilda's fear of being suspected is never put to the test.

Ten years of real poverty turn out to have paid for a piece of paste

The contrast between what was paid and what was owed is the point.

Five hundred francs — the value of the original, false necklace

Thirty-six thousand was the price paid; eighteen thousand was the inheritance.

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Content 3 · Expression 2 · Accuracy 1. Content should follow the sequence and include at least seven of: the search of dress, cloak and pockets; the reasoning about the cab and the missing number; the retracing on foot and the return at seven; police, cab offices and the advertisement; the dictated lie about the clasp;…

He is delighted with the soup while she imagines elegant dinners and shining silver

The scene is the marriage in miniature.

That her unhappiness is fed by comparison, which she cannot resist

Nothing in her own house has changed between the visits.

That he should give the card to a colleague whose wife was better fitted out

Said calmly, with her cheeks wiped — a very effective sentence.

She calculated the most she could name without an immediate refusal

The frightened exclamation of an economical clerk is what she is avoiding.

Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A

Real poverty arrives only at the end, and looks completely different.

It shows two people looking at the same thing and seeing opposite lives

He is delighted by the soup; she is imagining silver and marvellous dishes.

That she can be shrewd and deliberate when she wants something

The most calculating moment in the story belongs to her.

It sets off a chain of dress, jewels, loss and debt

Every step of the ruin begins with a kindness.

That she regarded the marriage as a concession on her part

The whole sentence is written from inside her sense of injury.

It establishes the attitudes that will destroy the Loisels before any accident happens

The necklace has not even appeared yet.

As genuine distress that is also perfectly effective

He is stupefied and dismayed, and she gets what she wants.

It shows a generosity that does not demand any credit for itself

The story records the sacrifice and he never mentions it.

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Content 3 · Expression 2 · Accuracy 1. Content should include: his contentment at the dinner table; the trouble taken to obtain the invitation and his reason; her rejection of it; his patience under her tears and his suggestion of the theatre dress; the question about the cost of a dress; the four hundred francs and th…

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Content 3 · Expression 2 · Accuracy 1. Content should identify at least four preparations with evidence: the standard set by comparison rather than need; the priority of appearances over facts; her capacity for calculation; the husband's readiness to pay, with the gun as evidence; and the establishment that the family…

Nothing, she said, is more humiliating than looking shabby among rich women

Flowers would be pretty; they would not be mistaken for wealth.

She asked whether there was nothing more, and found it in a black satin box

Nothing offered was good enough; she had to ask a second question.

That only the most dazzling thing in the case would satisfy her

Her request for 'only this' sounds modest and is not.

Nothing but the admiration around her and a complete, sweet victory

The story gives her exactly what she wanted — and then charges for it.

That he had to be at the office by ten o'clock

For her, the story says, it was all over.

Nothing at all — she felt it on leaving, and it was gone at home

The silence places the loss inside her own hurry down the steps.

Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A

Four hours of admiration, and ten years to pay for it.

It sounds modest while asking for the most valuable thing in the case

The phrasing is humble and the choice is not.

Because their poverty breaks the illusion the whole evening was built on

The elegance ends the moment the cloak goes on.

That being seen as poor frightens her more than a cold walk does

And the walk to the river is where the loss most probably happens.

The man who obtained the invitation spent it asleep in a side room

He had wanted it entirely for her sake.

It sets his ordinary working life against her night of glory

For her it was all over; for him the week continues.

It cannot be kept, and the reckoning is not in the borrower's control

A necklace she cannot replace has been round her neck all evening.

It is the last moment of the life she wanted, and she does not know it

The cry comes in the very next sentence.

She lent a diamond necklace without a question or a condition

That trust is what makes the substitution so painful later.

Maupassant gives the triumph a few lines and its consequences ten years

The proportion is the judgement.

It makes the later disaster a betrayal of pure generosity rather than of a bargain

She fetches the case herself and asks no questions at all.

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Content 3 · Expression 2 · Accuracy 1. Content should include: the borrowed nature of every element (invitation, dress money, jewels); the completeness of the triumph with evidence; the modest wraps breaking the illusion; the flight down the steps and the refusal of a cab; the walk in the cold; the mirror and the cry;…

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Content 3 · Expression 2 · Accuracy 1. Content should treat all three: Matilda (the new grievance, the refusal of flowers, the choosing of the most valuable item, the phrasing of 'only this', her absorption at the ball, the flight from the wraps); her husband (the practical suggestion, the generous one, the salon, the…

She had felt it on leaving, and they would have heard it fall in the street

It is a careful piece of reasoning, and useless without the cab's number.

It makes the truth impossible to tell afterwards

Told that morning, the truth would have cost five hundred francs.

One lifted lid at that moment would have ended the whole story

Matilda's fear of being taken for a robber is never tested.

She did her part completely and heroically

It is an unexpectedly generous verdict, and the story means it.

Proudly and simply, now that the debt was finally paid

She smiles with proud and simple joy as she says it.

A is true, but R is false

She learns that ten years later, by chance, which is what makes the ending land. The assertion is sound, the reason false.

Her refusal to be seen as she was, which made honesty impossible

A set textbook question, and the lie about the clasp is the evidence.

By telling her friend the truth at once, instead of writing about a clasp

She would then have learned that it was worth five hundred francs.

It refuses to reduce her to a vain woman punished for vanity

The woman who could not bear worn chairs pays every sou of it.

A tiny accident, and a small lie, have decided two entire lives

The narrator says it while she sits at the window remembering the ball.

The reader is left to calculate the waste, which the story never states

Maupassant stops the moment the reader has everything needed.

That the cheapest moment to tell the truth is always the first one

The textbook's 'talk about it' section puts it as: honesty is the best policy.

Set five hundred francs against thirty-six thousand and ten years of work

Maupassant stops the moment the arithmetic becomes possible.

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Content 3 · Expression 2 · Accuracy 1. Content should distinguish occasion from cause; give evidence of the refusal to be seen as she is (the flowers, the wraps, the refused cab); note that she never asks the necklace's value; identify the dictated lie about the clasp as the decisive act; state the cheap alternative an…

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Content 3 · Expression 2 · Accuracy 1. Content should include: the confession scenario and its likely outcome, grounded in the last line; the five hundred francs against the thirty-six thousand; the consequences avoided (usurers, attic, ten years of work); the real obstacle being fear of what her friend would think, wi…