Caro Claire Burke Explores the Performance of Womanhood at The Brattle Theatre

Caro Claire Burke — novelist and co-host of “Diabolical Lies,” a culture and politics podcast — discussed her first novel, “Yesteryear,” with J. Courtney Sullivan in a sold-out Q&A held at The Brattle Theatre on April 8.

Burke did not plan to write a novel about tradwife influencers; in the winter of 2024, she had just begun a writing hiatus. An editor at Katie Couric Media and holding an MFA from Bennington College’s writing seminars, Burke felt that her long-time career in writing needed a break. Convinced she would never write again, she downloaded TikTok for fun. What she found instead was the rising trend of tradwife culture. Burke saw these videos and noticed how tradwife influencers can amass millions of followers, performing an idealized life of modest dress, homemaking, and submission to traditional gender roles. Invested in modern politics — as evidenced by her podcast — Burke quickly saw the significance of tradwives in feminist online discourse and it ultimately inspired her to write “Yesteryear.”

The Harvard Book Store hosted Burke on April 8 at The Brattle Theatre to discuss her new novel, which follows a tradwife influencer, Natalie Hiller Mills, who wakes up one morning in 1885 and is forced to genuinely live the pioneer life that she displays online. Burke was joined in conversation by J. Courtney Sullivan, the New York Times bestselling author of “The Cliffs,” before a packed crowd. The event drew fans well beyond the literary fold.

Audience member Jennifer Brennan attended without having read the book, drawn by Burke’s politics and culture podcast, “Diabolical Lies.”

“They can articulate things 1000% better than I ever could,” Brennan said in an interview with The Crimson of Burke and her podcast co-host, Katie Gatti Tassin.

Since the book was released to the public just a day before the event was held, only a handful of audience members raised their hands when Sullivan asked if any ambitious readers had finished it. Yet, the majority, by a show of hands, had listened to “Diabolical Lies.”

Sullivan opened the conversation by asking about the novel’s origins. Burke traced her inspiration for “Yesteryear” to her TikTok usage; tradwife content seemed to sit at “every single topic of womanhood” she cared about, she said. Her editor eventually gave her a phrase for it: the grand performance of womanhood. Burke explained that hearing this phrase stopped her cold because it was what she had been writing about her whole life across various projects, yet she never had a name for it.

Much of the evening centered on Natalie, the main character of “Yesteryear.” Burke sought to create a balanced characterization of her, as “bigoted” yet “deeply ambitious and cunning.”

The conversation turned to the book’s strange political timing. Burke sold “Yesteryear” nearly two years ago, and several editors urged her to rush it out, warning that the subject of tradwives might not stay relevant for long. Burke had also originally expected the book to be released under a woman president; instead, her novel arrives amidst RFK Jr’s raw milk politics and his “Make America Healthy Again” movement. Burke believes that these social events led to the manifestation of tradwife culture online. Burke, who is currently pregnant in the midst of her book tour, added on a more personal note that she had coordinated all of her prenatal appointments before traveling to states with reproductive healthcare restrictions.

“That was a very sobering, practical, personal reality in the context of a book about a woman going to a time period where her rights are taken away,” Burke said.

After the event, audience member Megan Wittenberger, who had finished the book before the event, said that the gender dynamics inside Natalie’s marriage were the most interesting thread throughout the novel.

“I just kept thinking that if [Natalie] had just said yes to letting her husband be a kindergarten teacher and decided to lean in and go after her own career, she would have been a CEO of a Fortune 500 company,” Wittenberger said as a reflection on Natalie’s character.

Dani Urbina and Cesia Figueroa, two friends who attended the talk together, both found their way to the event through a shared love of reading and book-related events — though Figueroa had already heard of “Diabolical Lies.” For Urbina and Figueroa, hearing Burke discuss how she developed “Yesteryear” was the highlight of the night.

“It’s always super interesting to hear an author’s writing process,” Urbina said.

Figueroa was especially drawn to Burke’s connection to modern-day issues.

“How in tune [Burke] is with TikTok and what’s going on in social media, and how she kind of brought that into her work,” Figueroa added as she nodded in agreement.

Burke wrote the first draft of “Yesteryear” — her third manuscript after two others that went unpublished — in roughly eight weeks by essentially tricking herself into finishing it. The book grew from 80,000 words at auction to 125,000 in its final revision, with much of the additional editing focused on making the twist ending one that readers would want to reread.

When an audience member asked whether American culture on feminism was moving backwards, Burke pushed back gently with nuance. She said progress moves “like a spiral” with big steps forward, periods of reaction, and subsequent surges, ending the Q&A on a more hopeful note. The event enthusiastically concluded with a full house clutching signed copies of “Yesteryear.”