Author Caro Claire Burke’s debut novel Yesteryear released in spring of this year. The novel is about Natalie Heller Mills, a tradwife influencer who mysteriously wakes up in the year 1855. Throughout Yesteryear, Burke explores the culture of tradwifery, how it influences those who follow it, and the slippery slope it can become.
“Tradwife” is a term that has risen in popularity in the last few years with the increasing prominence of influencers like Nara Smith and Ballerina Farm. Th term is used to describe women who live via “traditional” values in ways like homemaking, and is often associated with conservative politics and religion. Earmarks of a tradwife are long dresses, frequent baking and cooking, farms or homesteading, and a lot of kids (often with unique and/or traditional names).
The novel’s apparent inspiration from tradwife influencers is found in Natalie’s “homestead” and business-like operation of her life. She’s known for her baking content and similar homesteading content. However, she has nannies, a production team, and housekeepers who run the bulk of her day-to-day life.
The novel’s exploration into what being a tradwife means, comes from Natalie’s life as a whole. At the beginning of the novel, she is a girl raised by a religious single mother in Idaho before going to Harvard for college. This alone is an interesting plot choice, as having a “traditional” girl be both raised by a single mother and go to one of the nation’s most prestigious universities is an indication that Natalie is not as traditional as she claims to be. At Harvard, she meets her future husband Caleb, the son of a Republican political dynasty. Natalie sees a relationship with Caleb as a chance for power and growth.
The entirety of the novel paints Natalie to be a self-righteous person, aptly summed up in the novel’s opening line: “My name is Natalie Heller Mills, and I was perfect at being alive.” At Harvard, she considers herself “better” than her peers. In her marriage, she finds Caleb to be, frankly, an incompetent loser, unlike her. For Yesteryear, she is the brains behind the entire operation who dominantes over her staff.
Natalie’s desire for power is one of the interesting themes of the book—she is “traditional” yet yields immense authority over her life, which is non-traditional. When comparing Natalie’s character to Caleb, she is the ringleader of their lives. Despite selling to her audience that she is a housewife, she is the one who controls their life. She orchestrated the purchase of their ranch Yesteryear with Caleb’s dad and their timeline for children, for example. This autonomy is directly challenged in the 1855 timeline, where “Old Caleb” is brutish and cruel to Natalie, flipping her original narrative upside down, but fitting the “traditional” label she had previously been so fond of.
The novel explores themes of power in the context of tradition, where people don’t fit the mold they were born into but don’t leave it either. Natalie is an ambitious woman, but the life she was born into prevents her from feeling free to exercise her ambition productively. Instead, she becomes a conniving, resentful person who uses other people as pawns to get what she wants. Her repressed personality, due to her way of living, forces her to exercise her motivations through loopholes that lead her into a descent of madness and desire for control at the cost of everyone around her.
The novel touches on many relevant and deep themes—like child/parent relationships, influencer children, postpartum mental health—although there is debate over if it handles the themes with the nuance and depth they deserves. Despite this, the novel is an entertaining read, as well as thought-provoking, leaving audiences with something to talk about.