Ghosts are a prominent theme in the Brontë sisters’ work, so perhaps it’s fitting that my first evening in their birthplace is spent listening for creaks on the staircase. Like Jane Eyre lying awake in Thornfield Hall, it’s almost too easy to visualise spirits lurking somewhere in the shadows beyond my phone charger.

I am lucky enough to spend two nights at Brontë Birthplace, the character homestay in Thornton, located on the western edges of Bradford. The restored Georgian home also doubles as a museum and cafe. Once the home of Patrick and Maria Brontë, the sisters and their brother Patrick Branwell are thought to have all been born here before the family moved to Haworth in 1820.

Anna and Mark, the custodians of the property and passionate history buffs, greet guests with infectious energy. Painstaking effort has been put into furnishing the space with genuine antiques, including a four-poster bed, chaise lounge, and a chamber pot discreetly tucked under the bed. Mark gently asks me not to use it, and I very considerately oblige.

My tour of the birthplace is full of the kind of detail that collapses the space between history and adaptation. A life-size cut-out of Jacob Elordi has become a particular favourite of Mark’s, he explains. Hidden behind doors, the 6′4 heartthrob is perfect for startling unsuspecting guests - an apparition many would perhaps long to encounter at the end of a dark corridor.

At curry house El Manzil, a few doors down, I marvel at the unique ways locals have reinvented the family’s legacy. Anna had described the sisters as “yassified”, and looking at their affectionately irreverent depictions on the menu, I’m inclined to agree.

Located 10km northwest of Thornton is Haworth. Shrouded in a careful negotiation between Gothic romanticism and ordinary village life. In describing the town as quaint, I risk underselling it. The cobblestone streets and preserved shopfronts are both atmospheric and startlingly lived-in.

On a springtime Saturday morning, it’s bustling with day-trippers and locals in hair rollers, and a craft fair is being held in the old parsonage. I buy a merino beret and gloves for £13 (NZ$30) in a vague attempt to look as though I belong here, to no avail.

The Brontë Parsonage Museum is meticulously laid out with artifacts and scholarship in every room, each object arranged with a care that humanises three women who have become mythic figures.

Unique exhibitions, like Layla Khoo’s recreation of the manuscript for Wuthering Heights, showcase the collective storytelling that keeps their memory alive. Each sentence of the novel is in the hand of a different person who felt tethered to someone long dead, an example of how literature builds an unlikely intimacy between strangers.The cemetery next to the parsonage has an eerie kind of beauty, the headstones unevenly reclaimed by the earth. Several members of the family are buried in a vault beneath St Michael and All Angel’s Church, below where patriarch Patrick would have given sermons to the village.

Lunch at the Haworth Old Post Office is a highlight, offering refined dining in a building that still feels somewhat like it has letters to sort. The original counter has been kept, and the owners are kind enough to show me the Victorian cash drawer; its century-old compartments still intact.

Salomon’s weren’t launched until 1947, so I set off in boots and a long skirt to maintain historical accuracy. Trudging along through the brush, the idea wanes slightly in romanticism, replaced by the more immediate feeling that Victorian women were much hardier than I, and probably cold most of the time.

For Kiwis, the scenery of the north is not altogether unfamiliar: sloping banks of green teem with livestock, patchwork farmland that at times resembles Waikato. But this, of course, doesn’t make the moorland any less breathtaking.

Mossy, jagged rocks and dry-stone walls cut through the hillsides, some engraved with words that aren’t fit for publication. It somehow deepens the historic character of the whole walk, like the landscape itself has become an archive over time.

The Keighley and Worth Railway offers its own panoramic views of the countryside, the standing corridors packed with visitors jostling for the best window position. As we loop around, trackside onlookers film the vintage carriage, a continuation of the British infatuation with trains, I find both endearing and inexplicable.

Later that evening, I indulge another English obsession - Spain - by ordering a tapas selection at Pave, where locals balance sangrias al fresco. People pass and chat throughout the village, the narrow streets assuming renewed energy as dusk falls.

Parting with the birthplace itself is more difficult than I expected, despite a fair few more bumps in the night. I get the sense I, like so many before me, have left my own mark here without even realising it. (Imogene Bedford)

Perhaps having a high schooler and feeling slightly nostalgic is what has pulled me back, this summer, to those days of summer reading assignments – and not just any reading, but specifically mid-to-late 19th-century literature.

What I’ve found is that there’s something really special about reading, with grown-up eyes, the same pieces of literature I was assigned as a teenager. I have the same copy of "Jane Eyre" that was mine in 1999, and have found myself equally impressed and embarrassed by some of the notes 15-year-old Abbey wrote in the margins: “Why don’t they just get together?!?”

I see things now that I did not before: what my 15-year-old self would have classified as stubbornness in a character, my 41-year-old self deeply admires as strength; what my 15-year-old self blindly accepted as true love, my 41-year-old self questions as a possible lapse in judgement but also allows for different societal norms.

I read “Wuthering Heights” for the first time because it somehow bypassed me three decades ago, and to be honest, I didn’t love it. (Can I say that?) But I’m glad to be able to check it off my “To Be Read” list.

Regardless of questionable familial relationships and flawed heroes, I’ve come to appreciate century-old literature for the way it makes me think, the way it takes time for me to flip a switch in my brain that takes me from 2026 to 1840-something. (Abbey Roy)

   

Funkcje wątków gotyckich w Wichrowych Wzgórzach Emily Brontë oraz Pogance Narcyzy Żmichowskiej (The Functions of Gothic Themes in Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë and The Heathen by Narcyza Żmichowska)

by Szklarz, Weronika

July 1, 2026

Zarówno w Wichrowych Wzgórzach Emily Brontë, jak i w Pogance Narcyzy Żmichowskiej występują elementy charakterystyczne dla „formuły gotyckiej”. Niniejsza praca stanowi analizę porównawczą sposobu wykorzystania przez pisarki wątków gotyckich, a jej celem jest wskazanie ich funkcji w wymowie obu dzieł. Autorka wyznacza najważniejsze cechy powieści gotyckiej, przeprowadza analizę konstrukcji przestrzeni i ich wpływu na bohaterów, a także omawia kreację postaci przypominających gotyckich łotrów. Ponadto podkreślono znaczenie sił nadprzyrodzonych w obu utworach oraz wyjaśniono, w jaki sposób gotycka maska służy wprowadzeniu kwestii takich jak związki nieheteronormatywne, dyskryminacja rasowa oraz opresyjność norm płciowych. Praca dowodzi, że wątki gotyckie w utworach Brontë i Żmichowskiej nie tylko tworzą atmosferę grozy, lecz za sprawą kategorii „niewypowiadalności” umożliwiają równoczesne ukrycie i wyeksponowanie tematów niemożliwych do wyrażenia wprost. Tym samym zestawienie Wichrowych Wzgórz i Poganki ujawnia transgresyjny potencjał gotycyzmu, pozwalający na wpisanie obu powieści w szeroki kontekst społeczno-kulturowy.

Both Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë and The Heathen by Narcyza Żmichowska feature elements from “the Gothic formula”. The thesis is a comparative analysis of the usage of Gothic themes, and its aim is to state their functions in the novels’ message. The author of the thesis outlines the most important features of the Gothic novel, analyses the construction of the spaces and their influence on the characters and considers the characterisation of these who resemble Gothic villains. Furthermore, meaning of the supernatural forces is highlighted, and also it is explained how the gothic disguise serves to introduce issues such as queer relationships, racial discrimination and oppressiveness of gender norms. The thesis proves that the gothic themes in Brontë’s and Żmichowska’s novels not only create horror atmosphere but also, through the category of “unspeakable”, enable the simultaneous concealment and unveiling of topics that cannot be expressed directly. Therefore, a comparison of Wuthering Heights and The Heathen reveals the transgressive potential of Gothicism, which allows both novels to be situated within a socio-cultural context.

Чартистское движение в романах Шарлотты Бронте и Элизабет Гаскелл (he Chartist Movement in the Novels of Charlotte Brontë and Elizabeth Gaskell)

Dmitrienko K. V. 

Current issues of translation, linguistics, history of literature and folklore: collection of articles from the XIV International scientific conference of young scientists dedicated to the 95th anniversary of the Department of Foreign Languages ​​(Ekaterinburg, February 19-20, 2026). - Ekaterinburg: Publishing house "Azhur", 2026. - P. 1224-1236.

This article analyzes how the Chartist movement is reflected in Charlotte Brontë's social novels Shirley (1849) and Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South (1855). It examines ideas about Chartism that existed in British society and how they were depicted in women's fiction of the second half of the 19th century. Particular attention is paid to the images of the characters through which the writers convey their attitudes to the social problems of their era.

   

Hardy and Free has been created by award-winning Yorkshire photographer Carolyn Mendelsohn and takes its name from a line in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights: “I wish I were a girl again, half-savage and hardy, and free...”

It was originally commissioned by the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth in 2023 as part of its contemporary arts programme and then a new series of large-scale portraits with audio from the women involved, was created for Bradford 2025, UK City of Culture and adorned Kirkgate Shopping Centre.

The photographs, which are three metres by two metres each are hung in a huge barn where they used to show the pigeons on the Yorkshire Show Ground.

Hardy and Free explores the relationship between 12 contemporary women and the natural world, all sharing a profound emotional link with the landscapes that shape them. (Catherine Scott)