Hareton Earnshaw is a character in Emily Brontë's novel Wuthering Heights. He is the son of Hindley Earnshaw and Hindley's wife Frances. At the end of the novel, he makes plans to wed Catherine Linton, with whom he falls in love.
Frances dies shortly after giving birth in June 1778 to Hareton, which results in Hindley's descent into a life of anguish and inebriety, so Hareton is cared for and nursed by Nelly Dean, the primary narrator of the story. When Nelly leaves to reside at Thrushcross Grange with Catherine Earnshaw and Edgar Linton, Heathcliff seeks revenge on Hindley and gains control of Wuthering Heights. Hindley dies shortly after the decease of Catherine Earnshaw, and Heathcliff sets out to treat Hareton as cruelly and unjustly as Hindley treated him: he reduces Hareton to servant-boy status at the Heights.
Frances dies shortly after giving birth in June 1778 to Hareton, which results in Hindley's descent into a life of anguish and inebriety, so Hareton is cared for and nursed by Nelly Dean, the primary narrator of the story. When Nelly leaves to reside at Thrushcross Grange with Catherine Earnshaw and Edgar Linton, Heathcliff seeks revenge on Hindley and gains control of Wuthering Heights. Hindley dies shortly after the decease of Catherine Earnshaw, and Heathcliff sets out to treat Hareton as cruelly and unjustly as Hindley treated him: he reduces Hareton to servant-boy status at the Heights.
In the same work, he is revealed to be the same character as The Necromancer from Tolkien's earlier novel The Hobbit. In Tolkien's The Silmarillion (published posthumously by Tolkien's son Christopher Tolkien) he is also revealed to have been the chief lieutenant of the first Dark Lord, Morgoth. Tolkien noted that the "angelic" powers of his constructed myth "were capable of many degrees of error and failing", but by far the worst was "the absolute Satanic rebellion and evil of Morgoth and his satellite Sauron."