The Fraud

“But liking William and reading him had long been vastly different matters. Which reminded Eliza that what she had said was true—within very narrow confines. She had taken the measure of William and his friends long ago, had always known who had talent and who did not, and as long as her cousin asked no further questions, her discreet, ironic and yet absolute God would wink at it.”

Eliza is loyal to William but sees his writing for what it is—average and even, at times, not good. Compared to his more famous writer friends, William’s writing is repetitive and overwrought. Eliza loves William but she doesn’t love his writing. She must lie to him about his writing because she can’t hurt his feelings. William’s ignorance of his own limited talents invokes the theme of The Complexities of Authenticity and Narrative.

“In the third she came to understand that no matter what she thought she was, a mother had no more rights over her child than a slave has over his life.”

One of Eliza’s deep-seated traumas stems from the time her husband ran away with their son. He forbids Eliza from seeing her son again, leaving Eliza with no legal recourse. Eliza’s reflections here acknowledge The Limitations of Women’s Roles and Responsibilities, while her comparison of a mother’s lack of rights with an enslaved person’s lack of rights suggests how inequity was deeply ingrained and upheld in British society in various forms.

“The strange thing about good people, Eliza had noticed, was the manner in which they saw that same quality everywhere and in everyone, when in truth it is vanishingly rare.”

Eliza here suggests that “good people” are naïve and too pure-hearted for their own good. Her assertion that goodness is “vanishingly rare” highlights how Eliza has been embittered by the experiences in her life. Eliza’s own confidence in her ability to read and understand people will later be juxtaposed with her inability to see her own limitations in truly understanding others, such as the Black characters she meets.

“One thing permitted and made possible the other, even if the logic was shrouded, too mysterious to penetrate. Like a finger. Like two penetrating fingers. Like two fingers penetrating a flower. In complete, candle-less darkness. As in the fingers and the flower were not separate but one, and so incapable of sinning the one against the other. The fingers entering a bloom not unlike the wild ones in the hedgerow…”

This quote uses imagery and symbolism to portray a sex scene. Throughout this novel, Zadie Smith has adopted the narrative methods of 19th-century British writers, who did not write explicitly about sex but instead alluded to sexuality in more metaphorical ways. This quote depicts sex between Frances and Eliza, a forbidden type of relationship that is necessarily expressed in innuendos and symbolism.

“We feel for poor Sir Roger and vice-a versa. He’s for us and we’re for him. I’m going to see him talk myself first chance I get—and throw half a crown to his fund if I have one! No, no, no we won’t be letting one of our own go to the wolves.”

Sarah is passionate about Sir Roger’s claim to legacy and identity because in his claim, she sees a version of herself and the people she grew up with who have been consistently ostracized from society and power. Ironically, she identifies herself with a man who claims not to be poor, but to be wealthy. This quote captures the irony and the passion of the Tichborne Case.

“The truth was he dreaded conflict: he only really knew how to be wounded. It was Eliza’s self-appointed task to remember the slights.”

This quote emphasizes the dynamic between Eliza and William. Eliza relies on William for security and stability while William needs Eliza to manage his feelings. Eliza advocates for William and keeps track of his emotions. William doesn’t want to face conflict, either within himself or the conflict he may have with other people. In having to soothe and flatter William’s ego, Eliza’s duties reflect The Limitations of Women’s Roles and Responsibilities.

“‘Oh, what does it matter what that man thinks of anything? He’s a novelist!’ Without meaning to, she had spoken in the same tone with which one might say He’s a child.”

This quote adds humor and irony to Smith’s novel. First, it denigrates the iconic image of Charles Dickens, whom Eliza dismisses as a mere “novelist” and, therefore, an unserious man. She also inadvertently insults William, who is a failed novelist. Finally, Smith uses her own role as a novelist to poke fun at novelists who write as though they are a part of the world but who really only fictionalize and romanticize the real issues going on around them.

“In the silence, Eliza was pricked, on the sudden, by an overwhelming and acute sense of loneliness. A severe, revisionist feeling, it worked upon her cruelly, making her feel that loneliness was all she had ever known. A consequence, perhaps, of what old women called ‘The Change’. A special, feminine form of delusion, not to be trusted, and yet apparently impossible to avoid.”

Eliza has been surrounded by people but is still lonely. As an individual woman without a child or a husband, she finds security in people who are socially interested in William or distantly related to her. Eliza spends a lot of her energy taking care of other people, which means that she and others don’t spend equal time taking care of her. Thus, Eliza’s loneliness is an important characterization that she nonetheless represses. What’s more, this quote highlights how little female biology was understood in the 19th century. Eliza recognizes that her emotions are changing as her body ages, but what Smith’s contemporary reader will understand as an allusion to menopause is a mystery to Eliza. Thus, she is made even lonelier as a woman irrevocably tied to the female body.

“Everybody saw it. All that he thought and felt, every angle under consideration, every doubt and every self-defence—it was all impossible to miss, for it was right there, scandalously legible. And what else is honesty—as the new Mrs. Ainsworth liked to say—but a face that reads like an open book?”

This quote implies that the Tichborne claimant is indeed a fraud. Eliza’s perspective is that he is obviously grappling with his lies and the notoriety he has attained, while Sarah maintains her stubborn belief in the claimant. This passage reflects The Complexities of Authenticity and Narrative.

“But she knew she lived in an age of things, no matter how out of step she felt in it, and whatever else he was, Charles had been the poet of things. He had made animate and human the cold traffic and bitter worship of things. The only way she could make sense of the general mourning was to note that with his death an age of things now mourned itself.”

Charles Dickens is famous because his works were deeply intertwined with Victorian society. In this quote, Eliza identifies the death of the author as a death of a certain part of culture. This quote is also important because it suggests that Dickens’s fame exists because he could authentically observe and replicate the world around him, echoing The Complexities of Authenticity and Narrative.

“For she thought of herself as having several faces to show at different times to different people—as all women have, and must have, to varying degrees—but she had never seriously considered the idea that there might exist also a class of men (aside from the obvious case of the sodomites) who, like women, wrote the stories of their lives, as it were, in cipher. To be translated only by a few, and only when necessary.”

Mr. Bogle presents a new and interesting challenge to Eliza’s worldview. As she’s been surrounded by privileged men, she’s never seen a man have to play the same social code-switching game as women. Men of privilege, such as William, get to be one version of themselves because they hold unmitigated and unquestionable power. For people who lack social power, such as women or Black men, wearing different masks becomes a necessity for survival and success, thus speaking to both The Limitations of Women’s Roles and Responsibilities and Racism and Oppression.

“She had known the giddiness of love, and the febrile sensations of hate and fear, but this feeling was different. It was an excitement of the blood that was yet under the total control of her mind. Was this what the admirable Mrs. Lewes felt as she worked? What William and Charles had known, all those years?”

Eliza has lived a life of many interesting experiences, but this new feeling which pulls her to writing is inspiring and a major change. This quote implies that Eliza is accessing her intelligence for her own creative ends for the first time. The idea that she does have control, despite her general lack of autonomy as a woman, helps her break free of The Limitations of Women’s Roles and Responsibilities.

“Then there were these moments of grace when she startled herself with the idea that if anybody truly understood what is signified by the word ‘person’, they would consider twelve lifetimes too brief a spell in which to love a single soul.”

Eliza has experienced true love and it is an emotion and experience that helps her maintain her faith in humanity despite her other experiences. Eliza celebrates the complexity inherent in the word “person,” reflecting that even 12 “lifetimes” is “too brief a spell in which to love a single soul.” Her interest in other people reflects a preoccupation with The Complexities of Authenticity and Narrative in social relations.

“Mrs. Touchet was struck by how much more passion may be aroused by phantom damages done to female ‘honour’ than by anything actually done to a woman herself. We are only ideas to them, she wrote, at the top of a page. But it was not in keeping with anything else she had written so far—she could not explain even to herself what she really meant by it. Frowning, she scratched it out.”

This quote emphasizes a double standard about women, in which the “idea” of them is more interesting to men than the actual reality of the woman. It also highlights how society has taught Eliza to hold her intelligence back, as can be seen when she scratches out the idea because she can’t explain it “even to herself.” Rather than sit with this and figure out what she meant, Eliza abandons the idea, just as society would want her to do.

“Keep stealing, my friends! From life for fiction, and from fiction for life. What a terrible business. At least William did it clumsily, with benign incompetence. Whereas his friend Charles had done it like a master—like an actor. That was precisely what was so dangerous about him. Charles Dickens played a part, always.”

Smith’s novel criticizes the ways in which white male authors have tokenized less- privileged people for the sake of their own gain. Dickens became famous for telling the stories of oppressed people, criticizing the flaws of British society and the systematic ways in which the poor were oppressed by that society. This passage introduces a new take on Dickens’s reputation by portraying him as a wily man who took advantage of his ability to read people so he could build literary fame and wealth for himself. This quote also speaks to the fine line between fiction and reality, raising The Complexities of Authenticity and Narrative.

“But all her life Eliza had refused to be the servant of pathos, and could never accept any argument on the basis of emotion alone.”

Eliza defies many of the stereotypical characterizations of women in the 19th century. Women in the 19th century were treated as incapable of being on the same intellectual playing field as men, and stereotyped as emotional and irrational. Eliza proves that women are just as pragmatic and intelligent as men, interpreting the world through her intellect.

“He did not say my fader. Had no hint of that Caribbean lilt she had expected and heard at various lecterns over the years—and for a moment this threw her. Nor was this young Master Bogle, like those musical voices of memory, pleading his case.”

This quote highlights that even though Eliza feels an affinity towards Mr. Bogle and has a more open mind than others about Black people, she still has internalized subconscious biases about Black people, reflecting Racism and Oppression. She assumes that Mr. Bogle’s son should have a Caribbean accent because subconsciously, she doesn’t assume that a Black man could be English. She compares Mr. Bogle and his son to other Black people she’s heard speak before, creating a box for their expression of identity.

“Being English, most commentary was quiet, poisonous, patient. She strained to hear it but could never catch it distinctly: she had always passed half a yard in front before the speaker began. But children, having fewer scruples, laughed openly, and could be heard asking each other what happened if you gave an Ethiope a bath, how such woolly hair might feel in your hand, advising each other on defence against cannibals.”

In this quote, Smith exposes the vitriolic Racism and Oppression against Black people in England. She criticizes the English as being mostly quiet about their vitriol; after all, quiet racism is still racism. Mr. Bogle and his son are dehumanized by these spectators who make ignorant and hurtful statements about them. This is a new experience for Eliza, who has never been a victim of such prejudice. In associating herself with Mr. Bogle, she learns just how racist her society truly is.

“There was such a strange mix of cowardice and cruelty in the boy, which his companion found hard to excuse or explain, but which Big Johanna, with her second sight, had swiftly diagnosed. A divided soul. Most people have only one animal spirit within them, but Roger had two: the mouse and the snake.”

Roger’s double character of “the mouse and the snake” symbolizes the internalized white supremacism that often informed the way biracial people viewed their role in their racist society. Roger is both a mouse and a snake because he is sheepish but also believes he is better than the other Black people he is surrounded by. Roger is a person who doesn’t feel that he fits in either the Black community or white society, but he is more eager to be accepted by white people than to build community with Black people, reflecting Racism and Oppression.

“The door opened inwards! The exotic island of her conception was not some utterly different and unimaginable world. It was neither far away nor long ago. Indeed, it seemed to her now that the two islands were, in reality, two sides of the same problem, profoundly intertwined and that this was a truth that did not have to be sought out or hunted down, it was not hidden behind a veil or screen or any kind of door. It was and had always been everywhere, like weather.”

Inspired by Mr. Bogle’s life story, this quote describes Eliza in the throes of creative and intellectual stimulation. She searched for such stimulation for a long time. For the first time, she discovers that she herself—her own mind and intuition —can be the source of that stimulation as opposed to other people’s writing. This quote is important because it highlights the passionate, inherent, and seductive nature of intellectuality and creativity which informs Eliza and William’s perspectives of the world around them.

“Yet even once one had glimpsed behind the veil which separates people, as she had—how hard it proves to keep the lives of others in mind! Everything conspires against it. Life itself.”

In this quote, Eliza reflects on the difficulty of truly knowing and thinking of other people. As Eliza herself learns throughout her life, it is difficult enough to get to know oneself. Her reflections also point to the ethical dilemma in which writers believe they are writing about someone else to advocate for them but are in fact only feeding their own desires, as Eliza does with Bogle. This raises the issue of The Complexities of Authenticity and Narrative.

“How could a woman ever improve when fenced in on all sides by contempt? When given so few opportunities? Then again, Mr. Bogle had the gift, as did ‘Sir Roger’, and neither of them could be said to have had much practice. Was magnetism a natural attribute, then?”

Eliza has discovered her desire to be a leader of the literary and activist group she has always followed, but she is held back by her internalization of The Limitations of Women’s Roles and Responsibilities. Since women at this time are not encouraged to regard themselves as thinking beings, there are few examples of women who pull in crowds and express ideas the way so many men do. However, Eliza recognizes that members of other marginalized and oppressed groups have been able to inspire others, which might suggest that magnetism is an inherent quality. At stake here is the question of who listens to whom, and for what reason.

“Getting old turned out to be a very strange business. She was learning so many new things about time. It could twist and bend until the past met the present, and vice versa. She was both here and there, then and now, it was invigorating, but also sometimes confusing.”

Smith’s narrative structure uses flash forwards and flashbacks to emphasize the ways in which people change or remain stagnant throughout their lives. While the world is changing, people like William stay the same. While the world is changing, people like Eliza try to progress as well. This quote also emphasizes Smith’s messages about time as Eliza gets older and starts to see time as both present and past. Her memories fuel her aging, which is a disorienting and uncharacteristically nostalgic experience for her.