Jane Austen is one of my favourite authors and I enjoy Pride and Prejudice along with most of her fans (although it's not my favourite). Her famous book includes Mrs Bennett, Jane, Eliza (Elizabeth), Mary, Catherine (Kitty) and Lydia. Despite Austen's love of strong female protaganists, Mrs Bennett is a rather weak character whose one aim in life is to marry off her five daughters well.
Today we learnt about another Mrs Bennet. Mary Jane Bennett was New Zealand's first and only female lighthouse keeper, taking on the role at what is now Pencarrow Lighthouse in Eastbourne, Wellington, after her husband tragically drowned. She fulfilled the role from 1855 until 1865, while raising six children, homeschooling them, making bread, raising chickens and vegetables, and living on one of the windiest places in New Zealand (they used to shelter in a cave during a storm rather than stay in their substandard house). The place is isolated now (16km round trip as my feet are painfully reminding me) - then it must have been extremely remote with supplies having to come in by ship.
When a new lightkeeper's house was built and a male lighthouse keeper provided along with the house, he complained about having to do the work with only a woman to help him. I have no sympathy for him. Mary Jane Bennett did it alone for ten years, buried a husband and two-year-old daughter, and lived where few women would have voluntarily lived. I suspect she would have been a fitting heroine in any of Austen's books.
Pencarrow Lighthouse is certainly worth a visit. The weather was neither too hot nor too cold for most of the walk, the scenery was wonderful (with views to the South Island), the company was perfect, and we saw not just one lighthouse, but two for a "new" one was built below the cliffs in 1906.
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