Yesteryear: A Tradwife’s Nightmare in 1855—Why Modern Comforts Aren’t Disposable

Yesteryear, the highly anticipated debut novel by Caro Claire Burke, delivers a premise impossible to ignore: Natalie, a Harvard dropout turned tradwife influencer who married into wealth at 20, abruptly wakes up in 1855. Her carefully curated life—complete with tastefully discreet appliances, a collection of luxury sweaters, and a team of nannies and farm workers—vanishes overnight. In its place awaits an outhouse, stained homespun prairie dresses, and the brutal reality of back-breaking labor, including washing a single load of laundry with homemade lye soap.

Natalie’s ordeal escalates when she attempts to escape, only to trigger a bear trap that severely injures her leg. Left to endure 19th-century pioneer medicine, she describes the medicinal ointment as smelling “like bacon grease”, with no anesthetic for stitches. The pain, she recounts, feels like her body has “depleted a month’s worth of energy from the mere translation of so many nerve signals screaming EMERGENCY to my brain.”

There’s a twisted satisfaction in watching Natalie’s distress unfold. One can’t help but think, “How’s all that trad working for you now?” The novel’s premise taps into a deep-seated frustration with the tradwife archetype—the influencer who romanticizes traditional homemaking while ignoring its harsh realities. Yesteryear channels this rage, making its premise irresistible enough to attract Anne Hathaway’s production and starring role after a four-studio bidding war.

I consumed the book in a single sitting, unable to put it down. Yet the novel stumbles when it suggests tradwives are as critical of themselves as feminists are. Natalie, aware her content is rage bait, refers to her followers as “the Angry Women” and smugly notes that “self-proclaimed progressive women” are “chemically addicted to hating women like me.”

On a trip to Target, she encounters Vanessa, a former high school friend who abandoned their devout upbringing. Natalie fixates on Vanessa’s presumed envy and contempt, thinking gleefully, “Go ahead. Give yourself a migraine thinking about me.”

Natalie isn’t entirely wrong about the backlash tradwife content attracts. In 2023, Cut posed the question: “Is tradwife content dangerous, or just stupid?” A 2020 essay described the sexism at its core as “the gateway to white supremacy.” And in 2024, a New York Times profile of Hannah Neeleman—“Ballerina Farm”, the movement’s most prominent influencer—sparked further debate about the movement’s implications. Yesteryear forces readers to confront whether the tradwife fantasy is sustainable—or even desirable—when stripped of modern conveniences.