What Brontë Country Tells Us About Britain Today

Haworth, on the West Yorkshire moors where Emily Brontë wrote Wuthering Heights, still bears the cobblestone streets and rugged hills that inspired the novel. The village and surrounding landscape suggest the harsh lives and wild forces of nature the book evokes, and the area today highlights the same stark contrasts and economic struggles—social change, rising food prices and widening inequality—that are driving populist movements, calls for reform and episodes of unrest.

Eight miles away lies Bradford, once a booming textile center that Patrick Brontë visited in his role as an Anglican priest. The city’s wealth and power have mostly evaporated since the 19th-century heyday; globalization and shifts in fashion sent mills and jobs elsewhere.

Today Bradford faces high unemployment, child poverty and periodic divisions over immigration, and a Labour member of Parliament says parts of the city have been very neglected. Haworth has instead become a destination for literature fans.

United Kingdom, West Yorkshire

haworth, wuthering heights, emily brontë, bradford, west yorkshire, inequality, populism, globalization, child poverty, unemployment