BookLife Review: The Fraud, by Zadie Smith

Victorian England, historical fiction, the Tichborne Affair, Charles Dickens, William Ainsworth, 19th century novelists, inequality, oppression of women, primo geniture.

I wanted, and expected, to love this book. But it didn’t happen for me. In The Fraud, Zadie Smith, award-winning novelist and author of White Teeth, tries her hand at historical fiction. The novel does some decade-jumping that confused me. Set (largely) in 1873, the novel jumps back and forth in time across the decades from the 1820s and the 1870s, to provide context and backstory. The leapfrogging feels both arbitrary and excessive. Though it operates as a device to fill in a few of the too many blanks in the story, many of the gaps may have been better left unfilled.

The Fraud is based on actual events and real people who lived in London in the nineteenth century. The author may have chosen little known characters and events from history to lay bare the damages rendered upon the victims of British colonialism and patriarchy, but the characters seem of such little consequence as to stretch the reader’s ability to attach and invest in them. The protagonist in the story is Eliza Touchet, the widowed housekeeper of the William and Frances Ainsworth household. William Ainsworth is her cousin by marriage. After the death of Eliza’s husband and son from smallpox, Eliza is left with only a modest annual income, and the well-educated Eliza joins the Ainsworth household, as Frances’ helpmate, the Ainsworth house manager and William’s de facto assistant, social coordinator, and first reader. Eliza is a sympathetic, but complex character. She is not warm and fuzzy.

William is a published author of historical fiction. He was a contemporary of, and by account, an associate of Charles Dickens. Ainsworth was, at best, a mediocre writer and at worst a plagiarist. His work is widely criticized in the publishing world, though he takes considerable pains to discount his critics and promote his genius at every turn. He is, in short, a buffoon. Eliza is smitten with Ainsworth’s wife, Frances, and the two conduct an affair during William’s extended travels to the Continent. Frances ends the affair on William’s return, whereupon Eliza, a complicated woman, has an affair, or perhaps more accurately a regular dalliance, with William. After Frances’ premature death, Eliza’s affection for William pales as she begins to understand the depth of her love for Frances, and William’s shortcomings and opportunism. It is unclear why these affairs are a part of the story, other than to explain why Eliza remains attached to the household even when she later learns that her inheritance was doubled and she could easily live independently. The love affairs seem untethered to the books themes of fraud, colonialism and oppression at the heart of the novel, other than to lay bare William’s clear disrespect of the women in his life.

In 1873, London is abuzz over the Tichborne Trial, a fraud trial in which the claimant is seeking his inheritance as heir of the Tichborne fortune. However, the claimant may, or may not, be an imposter (a butcher in Australia and who journeyed to England to pose as the heir). William’s second wife, Sarah, formerly a housemaid, is enthralled with the trial and draws Eliza along to accompany her to observe the trial. Eliza is mesmerized by the key witness for the claimant, Andrew Bogle, a man of color who stands to earn a significant reward if the claimant prevails in his claim to the fortune. Bogle grew up as a former enslaved person from Hope Plantation in Jamaica where Sir Roger Tichborne is known to have visited. His steadfast testimony that the obtuse claimant is the noble Roger Tichborne, despite significant evidence to the contrary. Eliza is captivated by him-is he truthful, as he appears, or an earnest opportunist seeking to claim his due after years of servitude?

Perhaps weary of her unstimulating role as housekeeper and frustrated by the lack of stature unmarried and widowed women garner in Victorian London, Eliza documents her experience of the trial. Her efforts include extensively interviewing Bogle, through which we learn his life story as a more or less liberated enslaved person who worked in paid service to Tichborne’s father and grandfather. 

Here the novel falters. After the trial, where the claimant is found to be a fraud and is sent to prison, and an unsuccessful appeal ensues, not much seems to change. There is a winding down, as William continues to struggle to find success as a writer, Eliza bequeaths a portion of her estate to newly discovered other children of her former husband, Bogle does not earn his reward despite his steadfast and loyal testimony, and the family and its principal characters age. 

The book certainly is not without merit. Smith effectively portrays the untapped talent and diminished status of both women and people of color in Victorian England. She presents a fresh take on the outright injustice of both the enslavement of humans as chattel and the subjugation of women who lack any rights or freedoms. Smith places the speeches rationalizing of slavery and colonialism in the mouths of male characters of questionable integrity, and the subversive advocacy for abolition and women’s suffrage in the mouths and actions of women in the story.  By casting the principal male as a mediocre writer, Smith highlights the wasted talent of women and people of color in Victorian England and the oppressive patriarchy of that period. Important as these themes may be to the righting of the ship of history, or herstory, Smith’s eccentric characters while fresh, do not compel readers to cheerlead for them. Moreover, while the novel may be based on historical fact, the central drama of the novel, the Tichborne trial, occurs largely off-stage in the sense that the primary characters of the stories are observers of, not participants in, the trial.