Yesteryear: A Tradwife Becomes a Real Tradwife

(From Pinterest)

Yesteryear is a novel that follows Natalie, a tradwife influencer, with a farmhouse, a rich husband, 6 children, and 8 million followers. But what she doesn’t show is the nannies, the farm help, the hidden kitchen aid appliances, a failing marriage, and multiple video takes. One day, she wakes up to a life that isn’t quite hers. The house, her husband, and her children all seem similar, but it seems it’s now the 1800’s. Now Natalie has to live the brutal reality that she has been selling as a beautiful life to her millions of fans and haters.

The thing that this novel did best is the character of Natalie. She’s not a good person, and we as readers aren’t supposed to like her. Right off the bat, we know that she is judgmental, selfish, and extremely rude. She seems to think that she is better than every woman she meets, but she doesn’t realise that she is just like those women and, in some cases, even lower. For the short time she spent in college, she spent it judging her roommate and her friends because she seemed to think that she was so much better than them because she was a “good Christian woman.” She even judged the girls in her church, even though they were supposed to be in her community. Something that I thought was funny is how much her roommate stayed on her mind. Every milestone Natalie had in her life, she thought about what her roommate was doing. It’s like thinking that someone else’s life is much worse than hers made her feel better about her own life. Which is kinda ironic because in the end, the roommate seems to be living a pretty good life, while Natalie’s life completely fell apart.

I am such a sucker for complicated mother-daughter relationships, and this novel definitely has one. Natalie’s oldest child and daughter is Clementine. It seems like their relationship was doomed to be complicated as soon as she was born. While not outright stating it, it's clear that Natalie suffered from postpartum depression, which doesn’t seem to fully go away. Natalie states multiple times that Clementine didn’t seem real, that she knew too much for her young age, that she was too much like Natalie. Clementine was always the one who questioned the things that Natalie would do. Natalie kept her kids on a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, homeschooled (they received a bad education), and kept the internet away from them. Natalie basically kept her kids completely clueless so that they wouldn’t interfere with her building her online empire. Clementine was different; she asked too many questions, had too much autonomy, and when she was able to get access to a phone and figure out things her mother was trying to keep from her, she played a major role in Natalie’s downfall. 

Another thing I think this novel did well is that it not only criticized influencers like Natalie (cough cough, Ballerina Farm, cough cough)– who sell this false fantasy life, that is extremely hard for a normal person to achieve in today’s world, while not showing the help they receive– but it also criticizes the viewers, the fans and the haters, because no matter what they are always watching, giving these influencers a platform. These types of people wouldn’t be able to encourage their fake lifestyle if we didn’t give them attention.

Overall, this novel is a huge criticism of tradwife influencers, social media as a whole, and family content creators who bring in their children before they even know what they’re doing. Definitely recommend reading this book; it’s a bit on the longer side, but it keeps you on your toes. Natalie’s downfall was something that I didn’t expect, which is why I avoided saying too much about it, because if you choose to read this book, then I would want you to experience it with no prior knowledge.