Caroline's Dilemma

Caroline Kearney’s husband bequeathed her a heart-breaking dilemma. Writing his will as he lay dying in Melbourne in 1865, Edward Kearney promised his wife £100 a year and more to educate their sons, but only if she moved to Ireland with their six children and lived in a house that her brothers-in-law would choose and furnish. Caroline (née Bax) had never been to Ireland. Edward had left as a young man. Why were these his final wishes?

How did this young widow respond to such a draconian exercise of male power from the grave? Could a husband legally force his widow to migrate against her wishes? Caroline’s Dilemma follows Caroline and Edward’s migration histories from Britain and Ireland to Australia, their marriage, and their experiences running sheep stations on Aboriginal land in South Australia and Victoria. Caroline did not want to leave Australia, leaving her own parents and siblings behind. She contested his will in the courts and struggled against the growing influence of his Irish Catholic family. Feisty, determined and sometimes devious, she drew on the support of her family, drink and his estate to try to shape her future and that of her children.

This extraordinary book combines story telling with an historian’s detective work required to bring it to light. Pieced together from evidence in archives, newspapers, genealogical sites and legal records, this book sheds new light on the workings of nineteenth-century gender and male power, family lives that span imperial sites, inheritance, migration, settler colonialism, the Irish diaspora and sectarian conflict. It shows how one middle-class woman and her family fought to shape their own lives within the British Empire and its colonies.