Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke

In all transparency, I finished this book months ago and only found the words to write about it now. As you can imagine, I have a very backed up list of book reviews. 

[spoilers ahead]

In all transparency, I finished this book months ago and only found the words to write about it now. As you can imagine, I have a very backed up list of book reviews. 

There’s been so much online discourse about Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it and see for myself. 

Natalie Heller Mills is a tradwife influencer who lives on her seemingly well-operated farm, run by her picture-perfect husband, Caleb, raising her five children, six if you count the one in her belly. Modeled to emulate the pioneers of the past, her rustic family home is stripped of amenities, is the perfect amount of mess—an organized chaos if you will—an idyllic backdrop for a TikTok to go viral. But of course when you pull back the filtered curtain, there are secrets, ones that her followers aren't privy to.

Natalie revels in the assumption that her followers are jealous of her, that the girls she went to college with would kill to be her. She believes her life is so perfect that it actually makes her sick. I wish I could be that delusional. Naturally, her life is all a fabrication, e.g., the hidden industrial-grade fridges and ovens that allow her to keep up with online appearances. It is simply a ploy to profit off of her young, impressionable, ignorant millions of followers. It's the commodification of gender, selling what looks like the ideal lifestyle of a "traditional" woman.

But what happens when, one day, you've actually become the persona that you put on and take off like clothing?

Yup, Natalie wakes up in the 1800s. Full blown pioneer life—trade a heated toilet seat for an outhouse, designer shoes for chicken shit covered galoshes , a GE touchscreen washer for a washboard with dirty water you also use to bathe in. Her fantasy of perfection and sourdough bread falls right out from under her. 

I believe that Yesteryear is a good book. It got me thinking about what it means to be a tradwife in and outside the context of social media. We see tradwifery play out online more than I'd like, with women promoting being the homemaker, keeping the husband happy in more ways than one, and building an army of children. There's nothing wrong with wanting to be a homemaker—that's your journey, not mine. My problem with tradwives in the context of social media is the blatant hypocrisy. It's being displayed for young women as something you should aspire to.  It's a trend that keeps women oppressed. This book clearly shows that through Natalie's career choice as an influencer (one that she wouldn’t even be able to have if we’re sticking to the true definition of tradwife, but hey, who’s keeping score?): she can provide for her family because her husband comes from generational wealth, one, and two, she's monetizing her lifestyle online, which the average woman isn't able to do. 

What I wished for more from Yesteryear was unpacking, or more or less acknowledging, the art of making decisions and dealing with the consequences. Natalie, as annoying as she is, is ultimately suffering from the white-knuckled constraints the patriarchy has on women. But it's never fully addressed. It felt like a "woe is me" story rather than tradwifery being portrayed as a gear keeping the system turning. 

[spoilers ahead]

Natalie made the decision to marry Caleb although she loathes him. She kept having children even though she has strong feelings toward how that impacts her identity. She suppresses her basic interests to fuel a fantasy to keep her husband feeling like a man. Whenever I see people making crazy decisions like free soloing or living out at sea, I always think to myself, "Wow, that was completely optional and they did it anyway," and that is what comes to mind when I think of Natalie. Not to be extreme, but I argue being a trad wife is akin to free soloing lol. There’s no net.  

Natalie participates in the system that is making her so numb deep down. And I felt like the story doesn’t drive that home enough. The plot twist doesn’t really do it for me either and really felt like an afterthought. It, again, focuses on individualism rather than the overarching critique of the tradewife phenomenon or trend. You can have individualism here if you tie it back to the bigger picture. That she’s trapped in a room with walls she built, blindly following a blueprint she was given. 

Yesteryear was fun to read regardless and I kinda love that the dissection and the untethering or exposing of the tradwife illusion is having it’s moment in books. It’s most definitely a new genre of psychological thriller or horror. The three things I learned from Yesteryear are: be careful what you wish for (I know you saw that coming), just because it doesn’t happen to you now, doesn’t mean it won’t happen to you later, and fuck raw milk.