GHOSTS

Howarth in Yorkshire was home to the Brontë sisters. It is now a heritage site dominated by the narrow lane which passes through the village, rising up the hill, lined with gift shops and tea houses. It is a caricature of Olde England whose claim to authenticity lies in the displays of ersatz Victoriana, New Age products and Third World handicraft which have become the ubiquitous emblems of the English idyll. The reason for the existence of this commerce and the visitors crowding the narrow lane window-shopping is hidden away behind the church. A surprisingly small and modest parsonage which, when I entered, had only a handful of visitors musing around its rooms. I had expected to be subjected to an overweening Brontë myth, but it was the pathos of their home and the story of their hard, closed and short-lived lives that made the impression. A graveyard dominates the immediate surroundings. Its heavy, oppressive stones and slabs lend the place a dark foreboding of death. Returning to the small main street and the crowds enjoying the sunshine, it was as if this was the true heritage experience, a welcome distraction from the past hidden away in its deathly surroundings. Howarth represents heritage as a dislocation from history. An opportunity to side-step the reverberations of the past and enjoy the simulacrum.