"Yesteryear" doesn't even know what it's trying to say
Much less do I
I truly did not want this stack to become a haven for hate-reading (only two posts in, who’s to say whether this is a long-term trend), but here we are again: I read Caro Claire Burke’s Yesteryear last month and it was terrible.
Yesteryear is a novel going like hotcakes because it’s purported to tackle tradwifery (in “an acidly funny, satirical take” according to The Rumpus), and the internet has Big Feelings about tradwives, so we were all excited to hear that this tradwife is transported back to 1855 and has to figure out life. I was definitely intrigued—I wanted to see how an influencer might fare without the modern conveniences. Turns out, that’s not what the story is actually about. Spoilers ahead: She does fine.
The book is told from the perspective of Natalie, a Harvard dropout1 turned influencer, who runs a social media account (pretty clearly Instagram, a la Hannah Neeleman) about her family farm. Her husband Caleb runs the farm; her nannies run the kids; she runs the account with help from her 21-year-old ‘producer.’ Her life starts to unravel when the producer quits, and Natalie is transported into either the past (1855, she assumes, looking at the heights etched in the doorframe with dates) or a reality show. The rest of the book is spent between chronological flashbacks describing how Natalie, Caleb, and everyone else got here—to this farm, with these unknown kids, everything shabby and old-fashioned—and “1855,” where Natalie wallows moodily in the unfairness of finding herself here. (Tell that to her 15-year-old, the real backbone of this household. Natalie does jack squat, actively undermines the 15-year-old’s efforts, and somehow convinces the girl to help her escape. Maybe because having Natalie gone would be easier on all of us.)
The point of Yesteryear isn’t that tradwife influencers talk a big game but need help to maintain a facade. Nor is it that religious fundamentalism is a tool for oppression (of men and women). It sort of tries to approach those things, but then backs away: she does run her farm without modern tools (or has a 15-year-old who does) and she has no actual religion to speak of. The book doesn’t have a point. Take out the isolated—literally visually isolated—parts of the book where our main character breaks into scripture quotes, and you get a directionless woman who wants a farm with chickens, marries a man she ends up disliking, moves to a farm funded by her nebulously rich father-in-law, and gives up. Ultimately, it turns out our protagonist—or perhaps antagonist? she’s awful—is on mood pills, so she was just nuts and high the whole time, I guess. The end!
This book brought up a lot of feelings for me, because I was raised in religious fundamentalism. I went in expecting familiarity and came out feeling unseen and completely misrepresented. Like Natalie, I have had these near-psychosis moments, where scripture and prayers sprung unbidden to my lips like incantations to ward off panic and overwhelm. But I also constantly, obsessively pushed every moment of my life through the sieve of tight religious frameworks to extract clear answers for what I should say and be and do; and Natalie never uses that filter. She says some things. She quotes some Bible. The rest of her mind is foreign to me, because she doesn’t ever monitor herself or her life for alignment with any belief system, because she doesn’t seem to hold a belief system. And if she was raised with one, but rejected it as she got older, what did Natalie retain or reject and why?
For someone who is supposed to be obsessed with God to the point of having weirdly erotic visions and sensations (including one scene where she’s being raped by her husband and it turns spiritually ecstatic—no, I don’t get it either), she isn’t bothered at all by her own swearing, taking God’s name in vain, anger issues, self-centeredness, or disgust with her kids. If this ecstatic feeling is symbolic of her mental surrender to religion and the God she serves, it’s odd to put that in a rape scene. Is she willingly surrendering her body and mind, getting meaning and satisfaction out of self-abnegation? That’s not consistent with the competitive, entitled Natalie of the rest of the book, nor is that consistent with rape, which is inherently nonconsensual. Is rape a better image, where she’s being abused by a religious system that takes without giving? Then why is she delighted by it and overwhelmed by pleasure? This should be a wake-up call: this is dangerous. This is breaking your spirit. This isn’t a system that will reward you for being in it. …But no. It’s just like “Wow people who are obsessed with pretending to be religious are like suuuper crazyy!”
And yet, it’s just Natalie with a religious flair (though she never goes to church or has any other kind of religious community; also weird for a supposed fundamentalist)— none of her immediate family, in-laws, or children seem to be religious at all. This undermined even the vague implications of oppression Natalie is trying to “survive.” She has generated her own circumstances, behaved horribly, and then bemoans the consequences, without anyone enforcing it and without making any effort to change things.2 Her husband Caleb seems entirely secular, and for most of the book is just going along with her plans. He starts off super kind and obsessed with her, but eventually sleeps with the barely-legal producer basically because “🥺she treated me like I was smart (unlike you, you frigid witch)🥺.”
There isn’t a single likeable woman in the whole book, and I ultimately found myself more sympathetic to the put-upon, adulterous abuser Caleb than anyone else. Which also disturbed me. Why foster this hate against so many woman purportedly trying to survive in these cruel systems? Why are women always the losers, always at fault, while the men who do truly heinous things are pitiful soft boys, merely lashing out against the harpy wives and preying women—against the Reenas who lie about sexual assault, the Shannons who “seduce” the father figures, the Natalies who trample anyone on their way to the top?
I came to the end, unsure if this was a critique of fundamentalist conservatism or actually a satirical representation of liberalism. “This is what you think conservative women are,” so to speak, “but look at all the valid points Natalie makes about women, about women in college, about women who refuse to submit and try to lead their husbands. Gotcha!”
Early on, Natalie’s roommate accuses her sexual partner of rape, after giving clear consent, and wrecks his life. Natalie considers this the inherent end stage of liberal feminism—but liberals wouldn’t defend that behavior. So what’s the critique? This isn’t Natalie’s distorted perception of reality, passed to us as unreliable, these are facts: we heard the girl consent. We know she lied about rape. We know his life was ruined. “That’s wrong” is a fair assessment, and muddies the reader’s passage through the book: I found it unclear where and when we’re supposed to agree with Natalie or recognize flaws in either side of ideological norms. I never heard any satire at all.
And that’s okay, because ultimately, none of it makes sense. Yesteryear is completely disconnected from reality.
A homeschooler with an unsupportive single parent cannot decide in her senior year of high school to attend Harvard.
A man aroused by a “dry peck” from his fiancee will not struggle to get aroused on his wedding night.
A woman absorbed into fundamentalism will structure her life, her thoughts, and her motivations around those fundamentals—not in random spurts of scripture recital.
A girl cannot go out to pick saffron in Idaho, in the middle of winter, in deep snow.3 Nor can she return with foraged mushrooms: it is winter. (Has Burke ever been outside?)
It could only be written by someone chronically online, who sees how some kinds of fundamentalism look, but doesn’t actually understand how they operate. Nothing in the book functions this way in our world—not human relationships, nature, history, fundamentalism—and so it cannot offer a valid or compelling critique of our world.
Burke has stitched together isolated tropes and calls it a story. It is a book of vibes: out of focus, blurry, makes sense with a quick glance or seen in one’s peripheral vision, but as soon as you look directly at it, it becomes a muddy swirl. Is it good to be a tradwife, as long as you don’t take mood meds? What are the draws (and dangers) of extremism? How might we critique the modern university? What are gender roles good for, and when do they fall short? The book broaches all of these topics, but never explores or addresses them. Anything it offers, you brought to the reading.
Natalie believes that women in college who don’t want babies are bad; is that a take we should agree with (because they’re definitely portrayed as awful, and Natalie’s the main character), or disagree with (because Natalie is so unlikeable herself)? We don’t get to see nuance, we only get to see Natalie being sick of her own kids. Is that because she’s a hypocrite (bad) or does our experience sometimes challenge our prior beliefs (personal development)?4 Are all tradwives hypocrites? Or is there nuance here as well?
I don’t know. I think Burke is critiquing conservatives and maybe trying to critique liberals, but her characterizations are so stereotypical and underdeveloped I don’t know what she’s trying to communicate, much less where I might differ.
“The most popular book of the year has nothing to say,” and I have to agree with that.
Social and cover image credit: José H. Bográn
I don’t have time to go into all the ludicrous details of this book, but I couldn’t roll my eyes hard enough at this. I know Harvard well (my husband got his PhD there). The fact that this homeschooled high schooler decided “I’m smart, I think I’ll go to Harvard,” and got in without an academic record, extracurriculars, or network of references is beyond unbelievable.
And remember, she’s supposed to be a brilliant go-getter who made it to the Ivy League. Life hasn’t beaten her down: until she reached the farm, she was supposed to have orchestrated every step. And then she doesn’t want it and collapses?
Did Burke or her editors have google? Saffron needs a mediterranean climate, and doesn’t grow well on the small side of Zone 6. Idaho is squarely in Zone 5, and it’s supposed to be snowy. Saffron is harvested from a bulbed plant: it would be dormant, even if it grew at all.
Our personal development, not Natalie’s. She never grapples with or even considers this.
I really enjoy your critiques, and to be honest your reflection on desire, consent, and violation in the novel is the only thing that makes me want to read it. As someone who, as a young girl, encountered primarily non-consensual representations of desire in film, I find this terrain very complicated and important to unpack. But your point is that such scenes seem discordant with the characterization of the protagonist, which is another matter. Thank you for sharing your reflections. From the reviews I’ve read so far, I’m more excited for the film adaptation than the book!