Learning to Lie: Victorian Incrementalism, Self-Deception, and Ekphrasis in Zadie Smith's The Fraud

Abstract: This article examines Zadie Smith's novel The Fraud (2023) as a multilayered critique of Victorian culture, arguing that the novel portrays not merely an isolated legal controversy but an ideological condition shaping 19th-century literature, politics, and visual culture. The article will first consider how the novel critiques Victorian incrementalism. From this wide political point of view, a section will then narrow the scope to the ways that Smith's characterizations of Eliza Touchet and Andrew Bogle reveal overlapping private and public fraudulence. The article's final section will narrow matters further, illustrating the ways in which Smith's use of ekphrasis—through caricatures, prints, paintings, and sculpture—dramatizes the tension between visibility and self-deception underlying the Victorian myth of progress.