I thoroughly enjoyed reading Caro Claire Burke’s Yesteryear. The novel is remarkably fluid and engrossing, drawing the reader in through its humor, disturbing undertones, and progressively darkening atmosphere. After its publication, Yesteryear entered The New York Times bestseller list and became a major topic of discussion in book clubs, particularly on BookTok and Bookstagram. The intense bidding war for its rights before publication and the announcement of a film adaptation further demonstrate the scale of this interest. The news that Anne Hathaway is set to play the leading role shows that Yesteryear has moved beyond the boundaries of the literary world to become a significant subject in popular culture.
Beyond all this visibility, however, what made the novel especially compelling to me was the deeply unsettling and thought-provoking questions beneath its accessibility. One of the things good literature does is not necessarily give us the correct answer, but compel us to ask questions we had never previously considered. Yesteryear does precisely that.
The novel’s premise offers almost perfect material for a satire of our age: Natalie, who markets an idealized version of “traditional womanhood” to millions of social-media followers, wakes up one morning to find herself living under the actual conditions of the year 1855—the very past she has romanticized. Once the filters, nannies, concealed modern kitchen appliances, and invisible comforts provided by the digital world disappear, what remains is not merely a pastoral vision of the past but grueling physical labor, childbirth, childcare, deprivation, and an extremely restricted sphere of movement for women.
Natalie’s own words make it clear that what she truly desires is not the past itself. She wants “the aesthetics of the olden days and all the advantages of modernity” at the same time.
In modern society, which forms of womanhood do we regard as free, which as backward, and which as psychologically or morally problematic?
The real question we should be asking ourselves is this:
When a woman departs from contemporary society’s model of “respectable womanhood,” why are we so eager to diagnose her before attempting to understand her?
Historically, we are confronted with a fascinating reversal. For centuries, a woman who rejected motherhood, questioned marriage, claimed authority over her sexuality, or rebelled against male authority was considered “abnormal.” Today, however, we sometimes observe the opposite tendency in certain liberal-modern circles. A woman who wants many children, places motherhood at the center of her life, finds greater meaning in domestic care work than in her career, or consciously chooses a traditional family life can easily be portrayed as a victim of “internalized patriarchy,” someone unaware of her own interests, or a politically reactionary figure.
The norm changes, but the discomfort provoked by a woman’s departure from the norm remains remarkably consistent.
In short, modernization liberated women, but it also constructed a new “ideal woman.”
The boundaries of any critique directed at liberal modernity must be drawn carefully. The expansion of women’s rights to education, employment, property ownership, political representation, divorce, and control over their own lives represents an extraordinary historical achievement. To diminish the spaces modernity opened for women would be to romanticize the genuine inequalities of the past. One of the most important things Yesteryear accomplishes by sending Natalie back to 1855 is precisely to dismantle that romanticization.
Yet the fact that a social order produces liberating outcomes does not mean it produces no new norms or pressures of its own.
Traditional society told women quite explicitly: “Be a good wife, a good mother, and a good homemaker.” Liberal-modern society appeared to formulate a far more liberating proposition:
“You can be whoever you want to be.”
Catherine Rottenberg’s critique of “neoliberal feminism” is highly significant in this respect. Rottenberg demonstrates how a particular form of feminist discourse on liberation has gradually moved away from structural inequality and toward individual achievement, personal choice, work-life balance, and the woman’s continuous management of herself.
A similar subject emerges in Rosalind Gill’s analysis of postfeminist culture: a woman who is no longer merely monitored from outside but continually measures, evaluates, and optimizes her own body, career, relationships, motherhood, and emotions.
At this point, Foucault’s fundamental insight concerning modern power is worth recalling:
The most effective form of power does not always involve someone standing before us and commanding, “You will do this.” Sometimes it operates by causing people to continually shape themselves according to a particular ideal. Under such a system, oppression may be experienced not as an external command but as one’s own desire.
A substantial part of the pressure placed upon modern women is therefore no longer recognizable as pressure. It is experienced through the language of ambition, free choice, personal development, and self-realization.
Women no longer feel guilty only because they believe they are “not good mothers.” They also judge themselves for “failing to fulfill their potential,” “falling behind professionally,” or “not investing enough in themselves.” Traditional discipline and modern self-optimization are certainly not identical, but both present women with an ideal they are expected to attain.
If Compulsory Homemaking Is Oppressive, Why Should a Career Become a Compulsory Symbol of Freedom?
Here we encounter one of the central contradictions in contemporary debates about women’s freedom.
Forcing a woman to remain at home is clearly not freedom. But it does not follow that paid employment and a professional career should become the only legitimate indicators of women’s liberation.
When a woman says, “I do not want to work during the early years of my children’s lives,” “I do not want to place my career at the center of my existence,” or “I find the meaning motherhood gives me more important than professional status,” why must we assume that her preference reflects false consciousness, social conditioning, or the invisible hand of male domination?
This question is particularly important in light of feminist anthropologist Saba Mahmood’s approach in Politics of Piety. It would, of course, be methodologically incorrect to equate the women’s piety movement Mahmood studied in Egypt with American tradwife culture. Yet the question she posed to the liberal feminist conception of the subject applies far more broadly:
Why do we recognize a woman’s agency only when she resists established norms?
In the modern liberal imagination, the “free woman” is often considered free to the extent that she can distance herself from her family, traditions, religion, or inherited roles. As Mahmood demonstrates, however, people do not construct themselves as subjects solely by resisting norms. They may also do so by consciously embracing particular ethical and religious norms.
This does not mean that every traditional model is freely chosen. We must distinguish between a woman forced into marriage and one who consciously makes marriage the center of her life. A woman who stays home because she lacks economic alternatives is not in the same position as one who pauses her career because she wishes to prioritize the care of her children.
For the same reason, we must not confuse these two statements:
“This is how I want to live.”
and
“This is how all women should live.”
There is a profound difference between them. The first expresses a personal vision of life; the second creates a political norm.
A woman can remain at home, have many children, and attach great value to marriage without regarding these choices as the natural destiny of all women. Similarly, a woman can place her career at the center of her life and choose not to have children without claiming that her path represents the only legitimate model of liberation.
If freedom becomes a privilege we extend only to people who make choices we approve of, then we have a serious conceptual problem.
Yesteryear’s Powerful Paradox: The Tradwife Is Not Really the Opposite of Modernity
One of Yesteryear’s greatest strengths emerges precisely here. Natalie is not truly a “traditional” woman living outside modernity. On the contrary, she is a highly skilled participant in contemporary digital capitalism.
She transforms traditional womanhood into a commercial product.
Family life is her brand. Nostalgia is her product. Womanhood, motherhood, and faith are her marketing language. Her private life and children constitute a significant portion of her capital. The algorithm is her distribution system.
In one of the novel’s most striking moments, Natalie defines the influencer’s objective not as choosing between being lovable and being intolerable, but as becoming both simultaneously—in other words, as becoming “addictive.” This statement tells us a great deal not only about Natalie but also about the digital culture in which we live.
Erving Goffman’s theory of “the presentation of self,” developed in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, becomes almost automatically relevant here. People have always presented different versions of themselves in different social contexts; social media did not invent this human tendency.
What social media has done is make the performance continuous, measurable, and economically profitable. Its rewards are no longer limited to social acceptance but include followers, reach, advertising, brand deals, and money.
This is where the modern paradox of tradwife culture lies. A woman may wear old-fashioned dresses while filming herself with a 4K camera. She may prepare sourdough bread while optimizing content for an algorithm. She may criticize modern consumer culture while transforming her own nostalgia into a commodity.
There is therefore no genuine return to the past. What we have instead is the aesthetic reproduction of the past and its insertion into digital capitalism.
Where I part company is not so much with the novel itself as with some of the interpretations that have developed around it. To take Natalie’s dishonesty, narcissism, or ideological inconsistency and place every woman who values traditional motherhood in the same category unnecessarily narrows the debate opened by the novel.
Natalie, a social-media entrepreneur who sells a tradwife identity, is not sociologically identical to an ordinary woman who pauses her career for several years because she wants to care for her children herself.
To group them under the same heading is to reproduce in another direction the very stereotyping we claim to oppose.
Care Work: The Labor the Modern World Cannot Survive Without but Continues to Devalue
One of the strongest critiques of liberal modernity can be developed through the question of care work. The modern economy could not survive for a single generation without care, yet care work remains near the bottom of both economic and cultural hierarchies.
When you care for someone else’s child in exchange for wages, you are engaged in economic activity. When you perform exactly the same work for your own child, your labor largely disappears from economic indicators.
The contradiction here is not merely economic but also cultural.
Eva Feder Kittay’s work on care and dependency exposes precisely this blind spot within the liberal conception of the individual. Liberal thought often imagines the ideal person as an autonomous individual who makes independent decisions, is economically self-sufficient, and survives without needing others.
Real human life, however, is not built on such a foundation. We are all dependent during childhood. When we fall ill, grow old, or pass through other periods of vulnerability, we once again require the care of others.
Joan Tronto’s ethics of care persistently reminds us of the same point:
Care is not a minor activity belonging to private life that can simply be assigned to women. It is a fundamental political activity that sustains society itself.
Yet modern society, while depending upon care, can paradoxically punish the caregiver in terms of status.
Women Entered the Workforce, but Their Shift at Home Never Ended
Moreover, women’s mass entry into public life and paid employment did not mean that domestic and caregiving responsibilities were redistributed at the same pace. This is precisely what Arlie Hochschild’s now-classic concept of the “second shift” describes: a woman completes her professional workday, returns home, and begins a second working day.
When we add Sharon Hays’s concept of “intensive mothering,” the contradiction imposed upon modern women becomes even more apparent. A contemporary mother is not merely expected to feed, protect, and love her child. She must monitor the child’s cognitive development, respond appropriately to every emotion, track academic performance, provide proper nutrition, create quality time, read expert guidance, and feel at least partially responsible even for problems the child may experience in the future.
On the one hand, we rightly insist that motherhood should not be a woman’s only identity. On the other, we have created a standard of motherhood that is perhaps more intensive, specialized, and psychologically demanding than at any previous point in history.
Then we expect women to combine it with a full-time career.
Yesterday’s woman was told: “Be a good mother.”
Today’s woman is told: “Be a good mother, preserve your economic independence, advance professionally, do not neglect your marriage, take care of your body, maintain your friendships, invest in yourself, keep up with your personal development—and do not look exhausted while doing all of it.”
Women undoubtedly have far more options in the second world, and that represents an enormous historical achievement. Yet the multiplication of options has not been accompanied by a reduction in expectations.
Modernity has lifted part of women’s burden while simultaneously increasing another part of it.
Why Does a Woman Who Chooses Traditional Motherhood Disturb Some Modern Women So Deeply?
This is, in my view, one of the most socially and psychologically interesting aspects of the debate surrounding Yesteryear.
We cannot ignore the fact that some representatives of the tradwife movement promote deeply troubling political views concerning women’s rights, gender roles, and alternative ways of life.
At times, however, criticism moves away from those ideological claims and begins targeting women who choose traditional motherhood itself.
At that point, another psychological dynamic comes into play. People do not merely make the major decisions of their lives; they also construct narratives explaining why those decisions are meaningful and correct.
Imagine a woman who has studied for years, struggled to advance professionally, attempted to balance children with a career, and lived under relentless time pressure. Another woman appears and says, “I do not want any of that. Centering my life on my family is sufficiently meaningful to me.” This does not devalue the first woman’s life.
It may, however, make visible an unsettling possibility:
The price she paid may not be the only possible price of women’s liberation.
One woman uses the moral language of tradition; the other uses the emancipatory language of modernity.
Structurally, however, what both may be saying is surprisingly similar:
“If you do not live as I do, there must be something about your womanhood that requires explanation.”
This is where the real absurdity lies:
Is a woman’s choice free only when we approve of it?
If we accept “I want to work” as an expression of free will but explain “I do not want to work for a while because I want to care for my children” as social conditioning, we are placing limits on the very concept of free choice.
It is also epistemologically problematic to take a woman seriously when she says, “Motherhood does not complete me,” but assume that patriarchy must be speaking through her when she says, “Motherhood is the most meaningful experience of my life.” In that case, we accept a woman’s own account as authentic only when it conforms to our theoretical expectations.
That is a profoundly paternalistic position.
Nancy Fraser’s critique of the historical convergence between feminism and neoliberal capitalism is also relevant here. The struggle to free women from the male-breadwinner family model was unquestionably emancipatory. Yet the market seems to have responded:
“Wonderful. Now you can work full-time too. How you manage the children, elderly relatives, the household, and all the care work is your private problem.”
Turning participation in the paid labor market into the sole measure of freedom has therefore allowed the market to disguise its own hierarchy of values in the language of feminist liberation.
For this reason, I also find it troubling when some interpretations of Yesteryear move too quickly from Natalie’s behavior to psychiatric conclusions.
Reducing autism to a few stereotypes—rigid thinking, learned social behavior, or a “technical” relationship with emotions—may reinforce reductive assumptions about the extraordinarily diverse experiences of neurodivergent people. Similarly, using psychosis as a literary synonym for increasingly “grotesque” behavior risks transforming the serious psychological experiences of real people into a spectacle of strangeness.
The novel itself maintains a far more interesting ambiguity for much of its narrative. Has Natalie genuinely traveled through time? Is she participating in a television program? Is she undergoing a religious experience? Or is her relationship with reality disintegrating? Critics have also identified this ambiguity as one of the novel’s central sources of tension.
From an anthropological perspective, the genuinely interesting question is not which diagnosis best fits Natalie, but under what social conditions a self like hers becomes possible.
Why does a woman expose her life to the gaze of millions of strangers?
Why does motherhood cease to be a personal experience and become a brand identity?
Why can traditional womanhood become one of modern social media’s most successful content categories?
And when that performance collapses, why are we so quick to diagnose the woman’s mind rather than the economic, social, and cultural order in which she lives?
These questions do not absolve Natalie. She may be manipulative. She may transform her children into content. She may be dishonest with herself and her followers. Discussions of the novel frequently emphasize how she simultaneously desires freedom and becomes increasingly attached to the image of the life she has constructed.
The fact that a person is shaped by social conditions does not eliminate her moral responsibility.
Yet the fact that she has made bad choices does not make it unnecessary to examine the world that produced her.
This is part of the value of an anthropological perspective: it views human beings as neither merely victims nor merely agents but attempts to understand the complex relationship between the two.
Perhaps We Should Also Read Yesteryear in Reverse
By sending Natalie back to 1855, Burke asks an extremely powerful question:
“Would you really want to live in the past you romanticize?”
We need this question. To strip the past of grueling physical labor, women’s legal dependence, the dangers of childbirth, class inequality, and economic insecurity—and reduce it to an aesthetic of linen dresses, farms, homemade bread, and children—is to distort historical reality.
But a good novel also gives us the right to reverse its question:
Can we evaluate modern life with the same degree of critical rigor?
If 1855 had visible forms of domination, 2026 has subtler pressures of its own: constant performance, the obligation to remain economically productive, digital visibility, the endless surveillance of the body, intensive parenting, the care crisis, compulsory self-realization, and the idea that every few years a person must transform into a “better version” of herself.
Historical progress is real.
But the reality of progress does not exempt contemporary forms of domination from criticism.
Romanticizing the traditional womanhood of the past is therefore misleading, but so is treating the contemporary liberal ideal of womanhood as history’s natural and ultimate point of liberation.
Freedom Does Not Mean Teaching Women a New “Correct Way to Live”
Feminism’s historic achievement was not the defense of women remaining at home. It was ensuring that they were not compelled to remain there.
Yet it does not—and should not—follow from this achievement that a woman who wishes to stay home is backward.
Defending a woman’s right to work is one thing; turning paid employment into the sole measure of her value and freedom is another.
The real questions are more concrete:
Does a woman who chooses to remain at home have economic security? Does she have access to shared resources within the marriage? Can she return to education or employment if she wishes? Is her care work recognized? If she is subjected to violence or coercion, does she possess the means to establish an independent life?
We must ask similar questions about working women. Does she still carry the entire mental burden of childcare? Is she penalized professionally for being a mother? If she chooses not to have children, is that decision respected? Is she treated as an “incomplete woman” or a “bad mother” because she places her career at the center of her life?
We cannot reduce the issue either to “a woman’s place is in the home” or to “a truly self-realized woman must have a professional career.”
For this reason, it seems unfair to read Yesteryear merely as a story in which Natalie is punished or tradwife culture is exposed. I appreciated the novel precisely because, despite its accessibility, it refuses to leave the reader comfortable. Beneath its humor lie disturbing questions, and after it ends, it compels us to continue the debate.
We do not have to like Natalie. Indeed, our frequent discomfort with her is part of the experience the novel creates. If the measure of good literature is not whether we approve of its characters but whether they lead us to question our own certainties, then Burke succeeds to a considerable degree.
My objection is therefore not to the novel but to interpretations that rapidly reduce the complexity it offers to simplistic categories.
It is easy to read Natalie as a “reactionary woman,” a “bad mother,” a “narcissistic influencer,” or a psychiatric case.
What is more difficult is to read the world that made her possible.
Perhaps a more advanced vision of women’s freedom would not offer women yet another model of “respectable womanhood.” It would instead create a social order in which a woman is not required to submit her life continually for the approval of tradition, the market, or modernity.
Freedom does not mean only that a woman can leave the home.
It also means building a world in which her decision to remain at home—if that is what she wants—is not treated as an intellectual, moral, or social failure.
Ultimately, the issue is not so much which role a woman chooses, but whether that role is turned into a measure of her worth as a human being.
Bibliography
Burke, Caro Claire. Yesteryear. Alfred A. Knopf, 2026.
Fraser, Nancy. “Feminism, Capitalism and the Cunning of History.” New Left Review, no. 56, 2009.
Gill, Rosalind. “Postfeminist Media Culture: Elements of a Sensibility.” European Journal of Cultural Studies, vol. 10, no. 2, 2007, pp. 147–166.
Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Anchor Books, 1959.
Hays, Sharon. The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood. Yale University Press, 1996.
Hochschild, Arlie Russell, and Anne Machung. The Second Shift: Working Families and the Revolution at Home. Viking/Penguin, 1989.
Kittay, Eva Feder. Love’s Labor: Essays on Women, Equality, and Dependency. Routledge, 1999.
Mahmood, Saba. Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Princeton University Press, 2005.
Rottenberg, Catherine. The Rise of Neoliberal Feminism. Oxford University Press, 2018.
Tronto, Joan C. Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care. Routledge, 1993.
