Bronte has Nelly describe Cathy as a “perfect recluse” to emphasize that Nelly thought it best that she was shielded from all of the drama and conflict surrounding her relatives in order to make a claim about the idea that “ignorance is bliss,” Later in the story we can see Cathy be beguiled by Heathcliff and ignoring Edgar in caring about Linton and frequenting Wuthering Heights. Bronte’s use of the phrase “apparently perfectly contented” gives an emphasis to cause the audience to question the current actions to raise Cathy in this manner and tends to point us toward the future to see the effects of creating the “perfect recluse” Bronte exposes Heathcliff’s plan to claim that his values are flawed, and tie those values to the values of the society which he lives in.
Heathcliff stating he wants “the triumph” of making Linton superior only because Linton is Heathcliff’s descendant reveals how he wants to exact his revenge on those who wronged him in his childhood. Since the majority of those wrongs came from his lack of noble blood, racial status, and financial status, and valuing these things was the standard of Bronte’s society, we can infer a cause and effect relationship between the values of Bronte’s society and the kind of man that Heathcliff became. Therefore, by causing the readers to dislike Heathcliff, Bronte proposes a critique of her current society values of basing the way you treat people based upon, race, socioeconomic status, and the nobility of a family line.
Bronte characterizes Heathcliff as eager to manipulate Cathy by exploiting how she feels about Linton in order to provide a critique of societal values through Heathcliff’s appeals to emotion rather than logic. We have already seen Heathcliff as highly logical and often unfeeling toward others, so it seems a deviation from his character to speak to Cathy in phrases like “he’s dying for you” and “he’ll be under the sod before summer,” but rather Bronte is accentuating how he changes how he appears to further his goals and to be manipulative. This is exactly in line with how Heathcliff changes to appear differently toward people. Heathcliff continues to achieve his goals because he is exploiting the values of those around him by changing how they view him. By giving Heathcliff this understanding, Bronte implies that the societal values facilitate the success of people we label as bad.
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Here we see Linton portrayed in a slightly different light than what we are used to. Bronte uses very melancholy language and describes the “hollowness” of Linton’s eyes. We see Linton not as a whiny child but as someone who is actually to be pitied. Bronte uses this to expose just how evilly Linton has been treated by Heathcliff at Wuthering Heights. By making Linton a more sympathetic character in this instance, Bronte creates a chain of cause and effect that implies that Linton is heavily worsened by Heathcliff’s treatment of him, Heathcliff’s actions are caused by the way he was treated in childhood, and Heathcliff was treated the way he was because of the societal values on class, race, and financial status. Bronte’s description of Linton acts as a building block to show how the flaws of the society she lived in foster a cycle of people being mistreated in childhood and that leads them to mistreat their children and on and on.
