Brontë countries: nation, gender and place in the literary landscapes of Haworth and Brussels

This chapter assesses the legacy of Charlotte Brontë as it is bound up with a legacy of place. It seeks to reassert the overlooked afterlife of Brontë in Brussels through analyses of literary tourists’ accounts of journeys to and around the Pensionnat Heger from the late nineteenth to early twentieth century. This chapter argues that Brussels offers a counterpart to the Brontë legacy at Haworth by providing a space where Charlotte Brontë could forge an independent female identity away from England and the domestic home-place, and it explores how literary tourists sought out this idea of Brontë in their traversals through the city streets. At the moment of Brontë’s bicentenary these accounts offer a valuable framework through which to reassess the intersecting themes of gender, nation and place in Brontë’s works, and to reassert the presence of Brussels in the future trajectory of Brontë’s cultural legacies and afterlives.