Quality quiz

Questions and answers

1. 1

   Question 1. Which literary movement best describes "Quality"?

   • Correct answer: Realism
   • Romanticism
   • Gothic
   • Naturalism
   • Modernism

   Realism is the fit: an ordinary trade in a real part of London, plain working detail (leather, rent, a bill), and a social change — advertisement and mass production — shown exactly as it worked on the people caught in it.

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2. 2

   Question 2. What best describes Mr. Gessler's attitude toward his work?

   • Correct answer: He treats bootmaking as an art and will let no other hand touch his work
   • He treats bootmaking as a trade he hopes to expand into a larger business
   • He treats bootmaking as dull labor he keeps up only to pay the shop's rent
   • He treats bootmaking as a craft worth teaching to the young men next door

   Asked as a boy whether it is hard to do, the narrator gets the reply "Id is an Ardt!" Gessler will not tolerate leather he has not worked himself, and the young man who takes the shop over confirms it: he "wouldn't have a soul touch his boots except himself."

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3. 3

   Question 3. Who tells the story, and what is his relationship to Gessler?

   • Correct answer: A first-person narrator who has been Gessler's customer since he was a boy
   • A first-person narrator who worked beside Gessler as his shop assistant
   • An outside observer who reports the trade gossip of the whole by-street
   • The young man who takes the shop over and looks back on its former owner

   The story opens "I knew him from the days of my extreme youth, because he made my father's boots." The narrator is promoted to Gessler as a customer "at the age of perhaps fourteen" and keeps returning across decades — which is what lets us watch the shop, and the man, run down.

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4. 4

   Question 4. What does Mr. Gessler make in his shop?

   • Correct answer: Boots
   • Shoes
   • Gloves
   • Hats

   Boots — he is a bootmaker, not a shoemaker. The words shoe and shoemaker never appear in the story; what he makes is named exactly: pumps, "the patent leathers with cloth tops," "the tall brown riding boots with marvellous sooty glow," town walking-boots and Russia leather boots. Use boots when you quote the story in an essay.

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5. 5

   Question 5. Why do the few pairs of boots in the shop window puzzle the narrator?

   • Correct answer: Gessler makes only what is ordered and never reaches anything down for a customer
   • Gessler keeps changing them so often that no pair stays in the window for long
   • Gessler buys them ready-made from the large firms whose work he openly despises
   • Gessler leaves them there although they are the only pairs that ever failed to fit

   "He made only what was ordered, reaching nothing down," so the window pairs cannot be stock. He would never have tolerated leather he had not worked himself, and they are far too beautiful to have been bought in. The narrator concludes they could only have been made by one who saw before him "the Soul of Boot."

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6. 6

   Question 6. According to Gessler, why are the big firms taking away his trade?

   • Correct answer: They take the trade by advertisement rather than by the quality of their work
   • They take the trade by charging far more for boots than he has ever charged
   • They take the trade by hiring away the skilled workmen he trained himself
   • They take the trade by opening shops on streets more fashionable than his own

   "Dey get id by adverdisement, nod by work," he says; "Dey dake it away from us, who lofe our boods." It is the only time the narrator ever hears him discuss the conditions and hardships of his trade — and he ends it with a prediction: "Every year id gets less — you will see."

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7. 7

   Question 7. Why does the narrator stay away from the shop for nearly two years?

   • Correct answer: The many pairs he ordered out of pity lasted so long he had no honest reason to return
   • The many pairs he ordered out of pity were so badly finished that he took his trade away
   • The many pairs he ordered out of pity were never delivered, so he thought the shop closed
   • The many pairs he ordered out of pity cost so much that he could not afford another order

   Moved by Gessler's bitter speech, the narrator orders many pairs at once — and then: "Nemesis fell! They lasted more terribly than ever. And I was not able conscientiously to go to him for nearly two years." His kindness has bought the shop nothing but a longer silence.

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8. 8

   Question 8. How does Gessler explain his elder brother's death?

   • Correct answer: He could not get over losing the other shop
   • He could not go on working once his eyes failed
   • He could not bear another winter in the cold workroom
   • He could not keep up with the orders that came in

   Touching the top of his own head, Gessler says: "He could nod ged over losing de oder shop." The two brothers had worked out of "two little shops let into one"; when the business shrank to a single window, the elder brother did not survive it.

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9. 9

   Question 9. What has changed at the shop when the narrator returns after nearly two years?

   • Correct answer: Another bootmaker's name is painted outside one of the two little windows of the shop
   • Another bootmaker has bought the building and taken Gessler on as his hired workman
   • A large firm has bought up the by-street and turned the little shop into a warehouse
   • A second wooden chair has been added because the shop is at last drawing a crowd

   "Outside one of the two little windows of his shop another name was painted, also that of a bootmaker" — one who makes, of course, for the Royal Family. Gessler's own pairs are "no longer in dignified isolation" but "huddled in the single window," and his only explanation is: "Id was too exbensif."

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10. 10

    Question 10. What does "Tremulous" mean in this story?

    • Correct answer: Shaking or trembling, especially from age or weakness
    • Speaking rapidly, especially from anger or excitement
    • Standing perfectly still, especially from shock or fear
    • Growing heavier, especially from long rest or idleness

    Tremulous means trembling or unsteady. The narrator goes abroad and is away for over a year; in that time Gessler ages fifteen years in the narrator's eyes, and "genuinely, this time, did not at first know me." The word is the first plain sign that the man is starving.

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11. 11

    Question 11. What does "quarter day" mean in the story?

    • Correct answer: One of the four days a year when rents and accounts traditionally fell due
    • One of the four days a year when the West End shops closed for a holiday
    • The one day each week on which a bootmaker delivered his finished work
    • The last day allowed for returning a pair of boots that did not fit well

    Quarter day was one of four fixed dates in the year when rents and bills were settled, and Gessler had always waited for it. So when the bill turns up early, tucked "in the mouth of one of the town walking-boots," the amount is normal but the timing is not — it gives the narrator "quite a shock," and we learn why a week later.

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12. 12

    Question 12. What do the boots most clearly symbolize?

    • Correct answer: Handmade art and personal integrity surviving into an age of machine-made goods
    • Inherited wealth and the social rank of the families who could afford to wear them
    • The narrator's private guilt at having stayed away from the little shop so long
    • The friendship between the two brothers who share the by-street shop between them

    The window pairs "could only have been made by one who saw before him the Soul of Boot" — footwear treated as a spiritual ideal, not merchandise. The symbolism runs into the maker: Gessler is "a little as if made from leather," with eyes holding "the simple gravity of one secretly possessed by the Ideal." And at the close, after his name has been painted out, the work outlasts the workman: "Still there, in the window, were the slim pumps, the patent leathers with cloth tops, the sooty riding boots."

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13. 13

    Question 13. How does the narrator describe going into Gessler's shop?

    • Correct answer: He goes in restfully, as one enters a church, and waits inhaling the incense of his trade
    • He goes in briskly, as one enters a bank, and waits counting the money in his own pocket
    • He goes in warily, as one enters a courtroom, and waits rehearsing what he means to say
    • He goes in cheerfully, as one enters a tavern, and waits listening to the talk around him

    Not like most shops, in the mood of "Please serve me, and let me go!" but "restfully, as one enters a church," sitting on the single wooden chair "inhaling the incense of his trade." The religious imagery treats the workshop as a place of worship — and Gessler comes down the stairs like a man "awakened from some dream of boots."

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14. 14

    Question 14. Why is the story called "Quality"?

    • Correct answer: It names the standard Gessler will not lower, even when keeping to it costs him his life
    • It names the grade of leather the big firms advertise to draw his customers away
    • It names the rank of the customers who once filled the fashionable by-street each season
    • It names the honor the Royal Family granted the bootmaker who took the shop over

    The word appears just once in the story, in the last parcel of boots: "In shape and fit, in finish and quality of leather, they were the best he had ever made me." Those boots were made by a man already starving to death, so the title arrives welded to the price he paid for it. It also cuts against the commercial sense of the word — the big firms shift far more goods, but in Gessler's judgement what they sell is "Drash!"

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15. 15

    Question 15. When and where was Quality first published?

    • Correct answer: 1912, in The Inn of Tranquillity
    • 1906, in The Man of Property
    • 1922, in The Forsyte Saga
    • 1932, in Flowering Wilderness

    Quality appeared in 1912 in The Inn of Tranquillity: Studies and Essays, a volume that mixes short fiction with essays — which is why some study sites file this piece as an essay. Galsworthy went on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1932, cited above all for The Forsyte Saga, and died a few weeks later in January 1933.

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16. 16

    Question 16. What is the central irony of the story?

    • Correct answer: The excellence of his boots ruins his trade, because they refuse to wear out
    • The loyalty of the narrator is what first draws the big firms into the by-street
    • The elder brother inherits the shop and sells it to the firm next door for profit
    • The boots the narrator buys elsewhere turn out to outlast every pair Gessler made

    Gessler is destroyed by the very excellence he lives for. "His boots lasted terribly, having something beyond the temporary," and the narrator's apology for two years' absence is "but your boots are really too good, you know!" Sharpest of all: the four pairs made while he starves are "the best he had ever made me," so the summit of his craft and his death arrive in the same week.

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17. 17

    Question 17. Why does Galsworthy write Gessler's speech in phonetic dialect?

    • Correct answer: It keeps his voice distinct and unbending beside the smoother English voices around him
    • It shows that he is badly educated and therefore unfit to run a business of his own
    • It signals that the narrator cannot recall his words and is inventing them as he goes
    • It marks him as a comic figure whose slow ruin is not meant to be taken seriously

    Phonetic dialect — "Do you wand any boods?", "Id is an Ardt!" — makes Gessler audibly foreign and immovable, a man who will not smooth himself for the market any more than he will hurry an order. Set against him is the brisk, empty English of his successor, who praises the dead man and dismisses his ideas in the same breath.

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18. 18

    Question 18. Which statement best expresses the main theme of the story?

    • Correct answer: A market that rewards advertising and speed leaves no room for a patient craftsman
    • A craftsman working alone will always outlast the large firms that employ many hands
    • A tradesman who refuses to raise his prices grows wealthy by keeping his old customers
    • A customer who buys from a friend is sure to receive better work than from a stranger

    Gessler's flattest line is his bitterest verdict on the age: "Beople do nod wand good boods, id seems." The trade goes to the firms that advertise; a man who insists on doing the work perfectly, alone, and only to order, is priced out of his own excellence. Galsworthy's point is that the loss is not only Gessler's — it is ours.

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19. 19

    Question 19. Which of these events actually happened in the story?

    • Gessler and his elder brother work out of two little shops let into one.

      Happened

      The narrator's first sentence places him "inhabiting with his elder brother two little shops let into one, in a small by-street" that was then most fashionably placed in the West End.

    • Gessler tells the narrator that bootmaking is an art.

      Happened

      Asked as a boy whether it is awfully hard to do, Gessler answers with a sudden smile: "Id is an Ardt!"

    • Gessler advertises in the newspapers to compete with the big firms.

      Didn't happen

      The opposite. "He never advertised!" says the young man who takes the shop over — and Gessler's own complaint against the firms is that "dey get id by adverdisement, nod by work."

    • Gessler notices at once when the narrator comes in wearing boots made elsewhere.

      Happened

      "Dose are nod my boods," he says, in a tone "not one of anger, nor of sorrow, not even of contempt," but with something quiet in it that froze the narrator's blood.

    • Gessler hires extra workmen so that orders can be filled more quickly.

      Didn't happen

      He never lets anyone else near the work. He "wouldn't have a soul touch his boots except himself," so an order took him such a time that, as his successor puts it, "People won't wait. He lost everybody."

    • Gessler's elder brother dies before the end of the story.

      Happened

      "My elder brudder is dead," Gessler says, and adds the cause: "He could nod ged over losing de oder shop."

    • The last four pairs are the poorest work Gessler ever did for the narrator.

      Didn't happen

      They are the best. "In shape and fit, in finish and quality of leather, they were the best he had ever made me" — made by a man who was starving as he made them.

    • The bill for the last four pairs arrives earlier than it ever had before.

      Happened

      The narrator finds it in the mouth of one of the town walking-boots. The amount is the same as usual, but "he had never before sent it in till quarter day" — so the early bill is a shock, and a signal.

    • After Gessler's name is gone, the boots have been cleared out of the window.

      Didn't happen

      They are still on display, being sold by the firm that outlasted him: "Still there, in the window, were the slim pumps, the patent leathers with cloth tops, the sooty riding boots."

    • A young man with an English face has taken the shop over at the end.

      Happened

      The two little shops are "again made into one," and behind the counter is "a young man with an English face" who explains that Gessler is dead — "Slow starvation, the doctor called it!"

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