ABSTRACT
Trust is on trial in Bleak House. A trust, as every schoolchild knows, is Equity's principal contribution to Anglo-American law, being a mechanism whereby goods are held by one on behalf of, and for the benefit of another. This chapter proposes a jurisprudential reading of Bleak House that, contra New Historicism. It explores how the text rewrites this law of trusts, reinscribing a new notion of lawyerly trusteeship, intensified, amplified and extended well beyond the strict doctrinal confines imposed by Chancery. The chapter shows that the lawyer-as-social trustee speaks, interpellating its readers as judge and jury, summoning them to pass judgement – a novel judgement – on a society that violates its fiduciary duty, as much as transgresses trust. A constructive trust is imposed, regardless of any intention, by operation of law in circumstances where it would be unconscionable for the legal owner of the property to assert beneficial ownership.
