Yesteryear Themes
by Caro Claire Burke
Underneath the plot, the novel wrestles with how women are expected to perform perfect lives while being confined. It asks whether escape is even possible when the prison is a role, a marriage, or a myth. Faith becomes self-deception, motherhood becomes erasure, and the frontier dream becomes a bought illusion.
On this page you will find each major theme broken down with concrete moments from the book, plus the recurring symbols that carry the weight. Look for the MAMA carving, the restraints, the broken microphone, and the haunting name Yesteryear. These symbols show how the past is not a refuge but a trap.
Major Themes in Yesteryear
Performance vs. reality
The novel shows how women are expected to perform happiness, beauty, and domestic perfection while the truth rots underneath. Natalie's curated Instagram life as a tradwife becomes the central performance, and the line between 'Online Natalie' and the real woman collapses.
- After finding a broken lapel microphone, the narrator asks, 'Hello, America. Are you watching me, right now? Are you entertained?' (Chapter 16)
- Shannon tells Natalie 'you're lying to them,' and Natalie replies, 'It's not a lie. It's just also not the full truth' (Chapter 41)
- In the epilogue, Natalie insists 'This house is not my house' on a constructed television set, and she puts 'engender sympathy' in air quotes.
Captivity and the impossibility of escape
Natalie is trapped not only on a ranch but inside a marriage, a gender role, and a pioneer fantasy. Every attempt to flee is met with physical force, psychological coercion, or the realization that there is nowhere to go.
- A steel trap snaps shut on Natalie's ankle when she runs for the woods, and Old Caleb carries her back (Chapter 7)
- Mary ties a rope made of three towels around Natalie's ankles, and Papa threatens to tie her to a horse overnight if she runs (Chapter 20)
- Natalie thinks, 'I was stuck here. Trapped. Alone in the middle of nowhere' after realizing Doug will keep the money coming but never enough to leave (Chapter 29)
Motherhood as self-erasure and performance
Motherhood in this novel is both a loss of self and a role that must be performed regardless of real feeling. From the 'MAMA' carving to Natalie's faked maternal love, women are consumed by the role while being told to smile through it.
- Natalie recalls, 'I will never be Natalie again. I will only ever be Mama,' and the door threshold is freshly carved with 'MAMA, 1855' (Chapter 1)
- Natalie privately thinks her newborn Clementine's gaze is 'malevolent' and whispers 'Who are you?' while cooing 'Isn't she perfect?' in front of others (Chapter 11)
- Natalie silently promises Clementine, 'I will fake the emotions until I genuinely feel them' (Chapter 13)
Faith, doubt, and divine testing
Religion is both a source of comfort and a tool of self-deception. Natalie constantly prays and interprets her suffering as a test from God, but the Lord remains silent and she is left to wonder whether she is chosen or abandoned.
- Natalie starts one morning with prayer, then says 'Fuck you' for the first time in her life after being slapped (Chapter 1)
- Natalie calls out, 'Hello, Lord? Could you explain what I'm supposed to learn, right now?' and the Lord does not reply (Chapter 38)
- During the assault by Old Caleb, Natalie prays and later frames her life on the farm as a test: 'the Lord brought her there with intention and a plan' (Chapter 28)
Patriarchy, misogyny, and coercive control
Men control women through money, sex, and violence, while the culture punishes women who fail to fulfill their prescribed roles. The frontier myth is used to justify male dominance, and women's bodies are treated as vessels for male legacy.
- Natalie reflects that 'America hates women' and reality TV wants to 'bloodlet them slowly over time' and 'devour them alive' (Chapter 14)
- Doug says, 'I'll pay for this little farm fantasy, and in return you'll give my son a big American family' (Chapter 23)
- Doug roars that if Caleb had raped Shannon it would have blown over, but a predatory woman is 'unthinkable': 'Kill the witch. Burn her' (Chapter 53)
Wealth, class, and the frontier myth
The novel undercuts the American ideal of the farm as a place of honest, meaningful labor, showing it instead as a bought fantasy propped up by generational wealth. The frontier is tied to violence, extermination, and denial.
- Looking at the Idaho landscape, Natalie thinks of 'Gold rush. Cowboys and Indians. Mountains of dead buffalo. Manifest destiny! Smallpox blankets' (Chapter 5)
- The Mills estate has wide academic hallways alongside narrow corridors 'to be used exclusively by Maria and Luiz and all the other godsends who worked at the estate' (Chapter 15)
- The curated #farmlife pictures at Yesteryear Ranch hide the dead chicks, the dead cow, and the marital desperation (Chapter 25)
Symbols and Motifs
The 'MAMA, 1855' carving
The erasure of Natalie's individual identity into the role of mother, and the false pioneer past she is trapped in.
- Chapter 1: a fresh entry 'MAMA, 1855' is carved on the door threshold
- Chapter 1: Natalie recalls, 'I will never be Natalie again. I will only ever be Mama.'
Restraints: steel trap, towel rope, ankle cuffs
Physical and symbolic captivity; women are literally and metaphorically caught and held in the pioneer world.
- Chapter 7: a steel trap snaps shut on Natalie's ankle when she runs for the woods
- Chapter 20: a rope made of three towels is tied around her ankles, and Papa threatens to tie her to a horse overnight
- Epilogue: Natalie wears ankle cuffs while being interviewed
The broken lapel microphone
Hidden surveillance and the sense that her life is staged, watched, and monetized as entertainment.
- Chapter 12: Natalie trips and finds a broken lapel microphone buried in the dirt and hides it in her skirt pocket
- Chapter 16: she grips the microphone and asks if America is watching her
Yesteryear
The nostalgia-soaked name for a false home and a prison; it represents the idealization of the past as a trap rather than a refuge.
- Chapter 8: Maeve tells the narrator that the family calls home 'Yesteryear'
- Chapter 25: the family moves to Yesteryear Ranch and curates pictures of farm life that hide the dead chicks and dead cow
- Chapter 56: the family's pioneer life is described as pretending 'it's the olden days' and 'the hiding became the plan'