Loading summary
Transcript67 lines
- [00:00]
A
Hello, guilty feminists. I want to talk about something that half the population experiences and the other half should probably understand better gynecological health. Because so many of us grew up with patchy information, some pretty weird myths and general feeling that we should probably just not talk about it. That's why I'm delighted to tell you about Bloody Powerful the Taboo Busting Guide to Periods, Menopause and Everything in between by Dr. Brooke van der Molen, illustrated by Hazel Mead and published by Cambridge University Press. This book is a warm, clear and genuinely empowering guide to everything you probably didn't get taught in school, from understanding your periods to navigating menopause and all the confusing questions in between. Dr. Brook van der Molen is a practicing gynecology doctor. You might know her online as the OB GYN mum, and she answers so many of the questions we've all quite quietly googled at 2am it's also beautifully illustrated by Hazel Mead, which makes the whole thing feel accessible rather than clinical. If you'd like to learn more or give it to someone who deserves better information about their body, visit cambridge.org bloodypowerful and you can get 20% off with the code bloodypowerful20 at checkout. Because knowledge about our bodies shouldn't be taboo, it should be bloody powerful. Get the ice cream Love Big Freezer.
- [01:30]
B
It's by the Peas.
- [01:33]
A
Some things are really best not to put off, like defrosting the freezer or if you're a landlord, sending a copy
- [01:39]
B
of the new government information sheet to your existing tenants.
- [01:42]
A
You must do this by 31 May or risk a fine.
- [01:46]
B
Make sure you're up to date with the new laws.
- [01:48]
A
Find the information sheet@gov.uk renting is changing. Welcome to a very special Guilty Feminist Culture episode. I have been lucky enough to snag a half an hour or so with the wonderful Caro Clare Burke. Now, if you don't know Cara's name, you do know the name of her novel, I'm willing to bet, because she has written Yesteryear, which is all over the Internet because it is a book about a trad wife in the United States of America who has the classic six children, handsome husband or looks like she's baking her own bread from scratch. But behind the scenes there's nannies and all sorts of staff and people making the social media clips. And then one day she wakes up and finds herself in 1855 and now she has to be a real trad wife and she doesn't know how she got there. And so that's a mystery for us, but also what we're looking at is the very real gaping differences between somebody saying they're a trad wife and somebody actually being a traditional homesteading wife. Anne Hathaway has optioned this to make it into a movie that has been making headlines. And I was so very excited to read this book. I started, I got one chapter in, and I immediately thought, I have to interview Caro. I emailed fourth estate, her publishers, and they said, we've got one window. This is it. Do you want it? I said, do I want it? Cut to Caro is now in my house. Please welcome Caro. Claire Burke. Yay.
- [03:44]
B
Thank you. Thank you. You are truly too kind. I appreciate it.
- [03:47]
A
Not at all. It's a really. Firstly, a stunning idea for a novel. As soon as you hear it, you go, oh, my God, why did I not think of that? That is genius. And secondly, very well executed, beautifully written. It feels like you are. You have a literary mind and you've written novels before and yet this is your debut.
- [04:09]
B
It is. It's my first published novel, but I've been writing fiction for a very long time. I went to graduate school and got my degree in fine arts. So I've definite been practicing the craft for a long time.
- [04:20]
A
Well, honestly, you can tell it's beautiful. Can you tell me what happened? How did you come up with this idea?
- [04:27]
B
Sure. So it was the winter of 2024, and I was. I had actually just finished a failed writing project and I was feeling very burnt out. You know, I'll never love again. And I downloaded TikTok a bit on a whim. You know, I didn't. My friends didn't really use it, my family didn't. And so it felt kind of like a guilty pleasure or like a little secret. And it was. It just so happened to be that ex. Exact time period where this obsession with trad wife aesthetics was kicking off. And so immediately I was served all of these visuals and I just found it to be this really intoxicating obsession for me in a strange way. Like, why do I like this? I'm a secular woman. You know, I'm modern. I don't. I wouldn't think that I would be drawn to this, but I was. And so I started participating in that conversation on TikTok. And. And then I was lucky enough at the time to be working in media and to be able to start researching it and interviewing, you know, Mormon and evangelical women for my job at the time. And I was so immersed in the topic that I think my fiction brain started working, and I woke up one morning and had. And had the idea for yesteryear. Wow.
- [05:34]
A
So you just woke up with the idea.
- [05:35]
B
Yeah, I mean, I woke up with what is essentially the elevator pitch. Like how. How marvelous it would be in a fictional sense. Like what an interesting manuscript that would be to have someone face what they claim they wanted and kind of push that theory to its farthest conclusions.
- [05:52]
A
I think one of the most interesting things about the novel, and I have to say, I devoured it now, I knew I was interviewing you, so I knew I needed to finish the book, and I was already listening to the audiobook. But I have to say, I burnt a lot of my weekend when I should have been working and doing other things because I found it really compelling. I imagined I wouldn't finish till this morning because I had such a brief period of time, and I'm quite adhd, so I usually skate in at the last minute. Oh, I was finished just sort of Sunday afternoon. I could not stop listening to it. And I needed to know what happened. You know, it was a real page turner, if an audiobook can be a page turner. I found the gendered realities and the hypocrisies and the contradictions very, very, very interesting. Did you always know that you wanted Natalie, our hero, to be somebody who was playing at tradwifery but not actually really doing it? Sort of. Did you know that at the top, was it based on Ballerina Farm?
- [06:57]
B
No, I didn't know much about what I wanted Natalie to be. I thought, you know, the visuals of Ballerina Farm definitely impacted me. And I think when I was doing research for my media job at the time, I was able to kind of look into the history of those visuals. And, I mean, we could spend hours talking about that. But long story short, those visuals are not new. And there's, you know, the image of a beautiful woman, usually blonde, very white, you know, taking care of the family and serving her husband and, you know, being out in nature. These are visuals that have been recycled throughout all of European history and American history, and they're usually connected to fascism. And so I knew that I wanted to play with those visuals, but I didn't know who Natalie would be be, because, I mean, again, I've never met any of these influencers. And really, the whole point is that you don't know these people. And so I thought she would be very plucky and a little bit more of the traditional, quote, likable protagonist. And then when I met Natalie, it was really just me trying to write my way into the novel and she was so different than what I had imagined that pretty much everything else cascaded from that. So, so many of the contradictions and her inability to. To reckon with them, with the performance really came from her personality. And it shaped so much of the book.
- [08:11]
A
She isn't very likable, as you say, but somehow I wanted to go with her where she was going. Yeah, she was somebody who found it hard to be kind. Her mother keeps saying, why can't you be kinder? Why can't you be nicer? And she found it very, very difficult. But I also thought there was a critique of liberalism. She goes off to college and she's hanging around with lots of women who are secular, who are feminist, and she doesn't feel she fits in there. She's not made to feel like she could fit in. They're looking at her like, you know, a U Amish or something because she's come from a quite traditional country religious background. And you can see that person with a more open spirit would have found her ways in. But she is angered by the environment she's in.
- [09:05]
B
Natalie has a very transactional relationship with the world. Everything is, these are the rules and this is what I am promised in return for following the rules. And so she tries to meet the framework that she is given and when it doesn't work out, she feels very victimized by that. And so I think emotional intelligence requires a lot of nuance and it requires you to really treat every human that you interact with as the their own special case. And I just, I don't think that that's how Natalie operates. I think that she really, really struggles to try to see the world through other people's eyes. And I think she really wants everyone to see the world through her eyes. And so I think that leads to a series of confrontations in that way.
- [09:50]
A
Yes, it really does. And she's very critical of her husband. She is, who is, ironically, although his father's running to be president and he's a good old boy inside, he's not a good old boy. He would like to retreat. He likes to raise children. He would happily be a stay at home dad. He at one point considers being a kindergarten teacher. And she's thinking, this is not the real man I married. Like go out and become a finance bro, make some money. And although the family has family wealth, they don't really need to make any money. She wants a man who looks like he's going to slay the wildebeest and come home with blood on his hands.
- [10:30]
B
Yeah.
- [10:31]
A
Is this how she's been raised? Or is. Do you think this is a wider, more gendered expectation, patriarchal expectation? She's born.
- [10:39]
B
Oh, well, I mean, I think Natalie. I think the reality. I mean, Natalie is a. What I would describe as a fundamentalist Christian. She's not a specific thread of Christianity, and that was intentional. But, you know, fundamentalist Christianity is really having a moment in the US And I think that we tend to forget that most of the principles within that, you know, style of religion are. Are pretty similar to a lot of the principles that we have. They're just turned up to 11. And so, you know, all of the expectations of. Of gendered traits that Natalie perceives are also ones that we deal with in the real world, like masculine traits, like ambition. I mean, ambition is coded as something that is very male. And when women have ambition, that is something that often they are punished for or that they are seen as male or as acting in a male way when they act on their ambition. And so Caleb is lacking ambition, and Natalie has spades of it. And they both are aware of that tension. And I think what they perceive as a failure, because they really, really have been raised in worlds where you need to adhere to traditional gender stereotypes, where the woman is. Performs submission and stays within the home and takes care of the children and, you know, gives off, you know, an aura of domesticity and femininity and delicacy, and the men have to be bullish and powerful and domineering, and it doesn't matter if you have money, because that's. The performance is just as important as the. As the practical reality of your own security.
- [12:07]
A
Yes. And so she's unhappy even though she technically has everything right, and opportunity to do things she would like to do, but it doesn't look the way it should look in her mind in a Christian household.
- [12:18]
B
Right.
- [12:18]
A
And so she's constantly, constantly dissatisfied. And she says at one point, I should have been a man and he should have been a woman, because if that had been the case, I could have gone out and brought him the bacon and he could have stayed in and raised the children, and he would have been happy and I would have been happy. But that cannot be right. And she doesn't really question why it cannot be. It just doesn't look cosmetically like the official order of things. And that plagues her because she is somebody who streams what she does online and puts her children in videos and hires a social media manager to make it look better than it is. When she wakes up in in 1855 and she doesn't know where she is. It looks like her house. Her husband in this other reality is still called Caleb. Caleb, but he's much older. She has different children who she doesn't recognize. And now she has to live with an outhouse rather than indoor plumbing. She has a fireplace, but she doesn't have any other kind of he. Her first instinct is to run. And when she does run, is it okay to say, is this a spoiler?
- [13:28]
B
Sure. Oh my God, say whatever you want.
- [13:29]
A
Caleb finds her, catches her, tracks her down and hits her so hard she ends up in bed concussed. He says, that's not what a good wife does. A good wife doesn't run away. I think it's such a wake up call for readers who might be reading it thinking, well, it does look lovely when I look on those videos of a woman in a gingham dress making Fruit Loops from scratch, as I have seen, who reckons she's got six children. But I don't know if you've ever looked after one child for one hour telling you this. You can't make anything from scratch in a white dress. That is not going to happen for you. And if you are going to do that, you're going to end up frustrated and covered in stuff. And that's the beautiful irony at the heart of this book. What research did you do to find out what 1855 was like?
- [14:20]
B
I did a lot of research and without getting too much into anything that would spoil, you know, too many twists, I had to do research and then I had to decide how to incorporate that research and I had to decide what I wanted to include, what I wanted to subvert, what I wanted to manipulate. There are a lot of details in the book that are untrue and there are details in the book that are true and that was intentional. And so I did research, of course, about homesteading in the 1800s, just what it might have been like for these women. I did research into fundamentalist communities and what it's like for women in these communities. And I also did research into the world of influencing. So, you know, these influencer pyramid schemes and boot camps and all these worlds where people become obsessed with the performance online of social media. You know, that's a whole industry now. And so I wanted to capture that as well.
- [15:08]
A
Yes. Yeah, well, all of those things do ring true. And, and there are breadcrumbs throughout the book as well about the mystery of, you know, how she's turned up in, you know, what appears to be 1855. And the questions going through her head is, could this be a reality show? Could I been kidnapped? All of those sorts of things. And where she's at the mystery as much as we're in the mystery, which is really very, very compelling. But it does make you think very hard about how much we as women have to thank the women that came before us, that did it so hard and. And fought so hard for us to have more accessibility.
- [15:48]
B
Yeah, I mean, I think that is what I always find to be so interesting about. The debates that I know are raging in America and I assume are here as well. The debates over, quote, unquote, the winds of feminism. You know, there's all of this fixation on, you know, should women be in the home or should they, you know, should they work? And I think, to me, anyone who looks into this would think the point is not whether or not a woman is taking care of her children or working. The point is whether you have access to basic protections, basic legal protections that allow you to leave a situation if you are being physically abused, that allow you to choose when you do and do not decide to carry a child, that allow you to decide, like, if you have any access over your own finances. I mean, the research I have done into what it was like to. To be childbearing in the 1800s, I mean, the number of women who had uterine prolapses who were just, you know, giving, truly giving birth until they. Until they died of exhaustion. And so much of the. The improvements we've made in maternal mortality have to just do with basic civil rights, with giving women the ability to decide, I don't want to do this until I'm exhausted or I don't want to do this for 20 years. And I think that, again, when we're debating about whether or not feminism worked, we're completely missing the point. And I think that that is often the intent of people who are trying to roll back these laws is to show a picture of a pretty woman and say, doesn't this look relaxing? Don't you look. Doesn't she look taken care of? Won't this be so much less stressful than your job? And I think that that's a much easier argument to make than, shouldn't we be fighting for workplace protections? Shouldn't we be fighting for even more protections so that you are actually safe?
- [17:29]
A
Yes, absolutely. And you can see this direction it's going in in the United States of America now, pushing young people towards what they call covenant marriages, which are more difficult to get out of. There are some states now that say, well, well, we'll give you this tax break of ten grand or whatever. If you have a covenant marriage, which means it's more difficult to get a divorce. You have to prove like serious abuse,
- [17:50]
B
which is, you know, they're also trying to roll back the work that we've made to reduce the teenage birth rate population. There's like a very active effort to encourage people, encourage scare quotes there, teenagers to give birth. That's our, it's. We have politicians saying very unironically we have a problem because not enough 18 year olds are giving birth right now.
- [18:10]
A
I saw a man on fox saying the 15 to 19 year old's birth rate has plummeted.
- [18:15]
B
And I'm like, well, and that's a problem.
- [18:17]
A
I'm like 15. But it's. If you're giving birth at 15, most likely you got pregnant at 14.
- [18:23]
B
It's not even legal.
- [18:24]
A
It's not legal right in any state of America to have sex before 16. Although in some states you can get married younger than that. So I guess you can have sex if you're married. I don't know. But it's, it's. In some states there seems to still be the option of child marriage.
- [18:38]
B
Yeah.
- [18:39]
A
And you just go, what's going on? That this is like bring back teen pregnancy. When I was growing up, it was all about how to stop teen pregnancy. How much were you considering that when you wrote about all her children and the way that they are being raised? Especially you focus on the girls, which is great, and what they're seeing, how they're behaving. Yeah, the girls in both timelines, in both the present day and the yesteryear timeline. What were you exploring there, do you think?
- [19:07]
B
Well, I don't know. I mean, when I wrote the first draft, I wasn't trying to explore any of these themes. And I think if I had been, it would have become overwrought. I think it would have scared me to think, okay, now how do I, how do I incorporate the themes of motherhood? You know? And so I think it was seeing it through Natalie's eyes and then in following edits, paying attention to this and trying to, I think for me it was trying to highlight absurdity because I really do feel, I mean, I think if any of this book is a subconscious catharsis for me, I find it absurd. I find the conversations that we're having right now to be patently absurd. I mean, we're trying to roll back no fault divorce laws in order to get women to have more babies. It's so obviously gruesome and I think that the fact that we are still having calm arguments about this on news channels is absurd to me. It's, it's silly, it's ridiculous. And so, so much of yesteryear was just trying to lean into the absurdity and the hyperbole of it all of being like it's, it's all ridiculous. And every character in this book and all of their beliefs are up to the volume level of 11. But that's also what this conversation feels like to me in modern day. It feels unbelievably satirical to me that we are talking sincerely, we are watching politicians sincerely talk about the need to have 16 year olds give birth more. And so I really, I think as soon as I became aware of that in yesteryear, I really wanted people to feel it on every page. Just how ridiculous the story is and
- [20:39]
A
how few protections women had.
- [20:41]
B
Yeah.
- [20:41]
A
And that contemporary women are going, oh, wouldn't it be nice to be on a homestead in the manner of being in subjection to your husband who is in subjection to Jesus? Here's the reality. You can't vote. This episode is brought to you by Prime Obsession is in session. And this summer Prime Originals have everything you want. Steamy romances, irresistible love stories and the book to screen favorites you've already read twice off campus. Elle every year after the Love Hypothesis. Sterling point and more, slow burns, second chances chemistry you can feel through the screen. Your next obsession is waiting. Watch only on Prime. What I love about what you've done is you have mainstreamed the conversation in a, in a really enjoyable book that has a mystery element, that has a, a first person account of this is what it's like. It's extraordinary to look at it all through her eyes and think, okay, if we are going to just sleepwalk our way into losing the vote, if we're going to sleepwalk our way into losing no fault divorce, this is where we're going to be. We are going to wake up in the 1800s, we are going to, we're doing a long term project at the moment called the Road to Gilead which is about the erosion of our rights, the attempted erosion of our rights in the UK through far right Christian nationalism. And it's extraordinary how well funded and organized they are.
- [22:20]
B
Decades long, it's been a decades long effort that they've been moving towards.
- [22:24]
A
Absolutely. And you, what you've managed to do is make this an interesting, relatable, entertaining story.
- [22:31]
B
Thank you.
- [22:32]
A
And that's so important because if you are not engaged by the news or you're thinking, oh, God, I can't read another terrible thing, but you're excited to read a novel, then this is a book that I think is going to change a lot of minds and make people wake up. I hear that Anne Hathaway has optioned it. Is this absolutely true?
- [22:53]
B
It is true.
- [22:54]
A
How very exciting. And are you going to be allowed to write the screenplay or consult on the movie?
- [23:00]
B
I am very happily not writing the screenplay, but I am consulting on the movie.
- [23:03]
A
Great, great. And where are you in that process now?
- [23:07]
B
We have a script and it's undergoing revisions.
- [23:10]
A
Well, I'm very excited about that because, again, a lot of people who might not pick up a novel will watch the movie and it will start so many conversations. What are you going to do next, Cara?
- [23:23]
B
I'm working on my next novel, which is very exciting. And then I think once this tour is over, I will sleep for seven months.
- [23:29]
A
Excellent. You will put yourself to bed because you will absolutely need to.
- [23:33]
B
Yeah.
- [23:34]
A
How far along are you in the next novel? Because we're all very keen.
- [23:36]
B
I'm about 100 pages in, but I think we've got some work to do. But I'm excited. It was hard after yesteryear to think about what I wanted to follow it and I wanted to make sure it would be something that would really feel resonant with the themes, but an entirely new story. And so that was the goal. And I feel like that's what we're moving towards.
- [23:53]
A
Can you give us any sneak peek as to what it's about, or are you keeping you sitting on that?
- [23:57]
B
Yeah, unfortunately. No.
- [23:58]
A
That's your big secret?
- [23:59]
B
No, that's my superstition.
- [24:01]
A
Excellent. Well, we await with bated breath and I really recommend that everybody gets this novel and devours it the way I have. It's currently available in hardback audiobook Kindle. There's lots of different ways to get it, and we are all also awaiting the movie. There are some really great characters in it. There are some brilliant observations. It's beautifully written. You know, it's not a clunky beach read. Thank you. And I love the turns of phrase. I got swept up imagining the old homestead and her new life. And I love the way it plays with time as well, that you cut back and forth. It's not like, here's Natalie now. Here's Natalie. In the past, we're cutting back and forth, and that really allows us to have the juxtaposition between the two worlds. I did not guess the ending. I didn't guess the reveal, but I was very satisfied by it. And I highly recommend it to all the guilty feminists out there. I think it's a perfect guilty feminist book because it's certainly feminist and it's got a lot of joyful guilt to enjoy, too. Thank you so much. Caro, is there anything you came to say today that you didn't get to say?
- [25:14]
B
No. This was a privilege. Thank you so much.
- [25:17]
A
Thank you. Well, please, anytime you're in in town or we're over in the United States, we'd love to have you back on.
- [25:22]
B
That'd be great,
- [25:28]
A
Sam.