Religious Hypocrisy and Faith in Yesteryear

Caro Claire Burke’s Yesteryear is a novel that refuses easy pieties. Through the story of Natalie Heller Mills—a woman torn from modern Harvard and flung into a brutal, anachronistic homestead—the book scrutinizes how religious language can be twisted into a tool of submission. At the same time, the narrative grants its protagonist moments of genuine, ecstatic faith, creating a deep tension. The thematic claim at the heart of the novel is this: faith is most dangerous when it becomes a performance of obedience rather than a personal, questioning relationship with the divine. Yet the text also allows that faith, even in its most manipulative forms, can produce real comfort and moments of transcendence—a contradiction the book never fully resolves.

The Thematic Claim: Weaponized Piety and Authentic Belief

From the opening chapters, Yesteryear establishes that the religious community Natalie grew up in regarded faith as a set of public performances. Her mother’s careful instruction to say her father was “no longer with us” (a literal truth that implies death) shows how the community prioritizes appearance over honesty. The “good Christian women” of that world “moonlighted as crisis managers for their good Christian men,” suggesting that piety is often a cover for patriarchal failures. Yet Natalie’s own private faith is real: she prays intensely, memorizes Scripture, and feels the Lord’s presence. The novel does not mock belief itself; it critiques the hypocrisy that substitutes performance for genuine spiritual struggle.

Tracing the Theme Across the Plot

1. Childhood Faith as Escape and Entrapment (Chapters 2–4)

Young Nattie’s faith is both her armor and her cage. In Chapter 2, she resists looking back at her family at the airport by recalling Lot’s wife turned to salt. The Bible verse becomes a survival mechanism—a way to steel herself for a new life. But her internal monologue also reveals a forbidden thought: “What happened to the women in the Bible who looked forward?” That questioning impulse is the seed of her later crisis. In college, her faith becomes a weapon against classmates. She calls Reena a “whore” (Chapter 6) and justifies her cruelty by framing herself as righteous. The Lord works in “mysterious ways,” she thinks, when the fight gets her a single room. This early section shows how piety can be used to judge others while insulating oneself from self-reflection.

2. The Harvard Humiliation and Silent Heaven (Chapters 4–7)

Natalie’s first night at college is a trial of faith. Drunk and terrified, she prays silently while Reena has sex in the room: “please send him home.” Heaven does not answer. The rape scene is presented as a kind of spiritual violation; the biblical “ten horns” passage she recalls frames Reena as a whore of Babylon. Natalie’s faith here is a shelter for trauma, but it also prevents her from seeing Reena as a complex human being. The silence of God during that ordeal—a silence that echoes through the rest of the novel—begins to crack her certainty. She later admits, “My teachers would come to their own conclusions,” about her father’s absence, showing how religious language can be manipulated for social cover.

3. Yesteryear: Ecstatic Piety and Divine Surveillance (Chapters 30–34)

In the past world, Natalie’s faith undergoes a strange transformation. Stranded with Old Caleb and the children, she initially interprets her suffering as a test from the Lord. Chapter 30 is a feverish prayer: “My Maker wants to see what I am capable of.” She feels herself watched not by Old Caleb but by God. This is ecstatic piety—she experiences divine presence so intensely that she masturbates while repeating her mother’s folk rhyme about women’s work. The scene is visceral and unsettling, blending religious fervor with bodily desperation.

Later, in Chapter 34, she comes to believe that the Lord is speaking to her through Mary. Mary’s strange behavior—sleeping in, snapping at the boys—is read by Natalie as a divine visitation. When she steps onto the porch and sees Mary’s face glowing with moonlight, she whispers, “Hello, Father.” This is the peak of her ecstatic faith: she believes she is receiving direct revelation. Yet the irony is that this “visitation” is actually Mary’s trauma surfacing. The novel never confirms whether the Lord was truly present; it leaves the possibility open while grounding the experience in psychological distress. The thematic tension here is sharp: faith provides Natalie with meaning and purpose, but it also blinds her to Mary’s real needs.

4. The Return of the Real: Divine Silence and Judgment (Chapter 57, Epilogue)

By Chapter 57, the ecstasy has faded. Lost in the snowy woods, Natalie returns to the cabin only to find Old Caleb exasperated and Maeve’s fever broken. A red Subaru arrives with a woman who looks identical to her—Reena? A version of herself? The protagonist feels “that judgment day has come.” Divine silence replaces divine presence. In the Epilogue, five years later, Natalie is in prison for child abuse, speaking to Reena. Her faith is not mentioned; instead, Mary’s memoir retells the story. The silence of God in the face of Natalie’s suffering and her own failures is the novel’s final statement: institutional religion failed her, and her ecstatic experiences could not save her from harming others.

Character Connections

Natalie Heller Mills is the primary vessel for the theme. Her faith evolves from childhood performance, to Harvard weapon, to Yesteryear ecstasy, to prison silence. She is both victim and perpetrator, her faith enabling her to justify cruelty while also giving her moments of genuine transcendence.

Mary, Natalie’s daughter, becomes the unwitting medium of the divine in Chapter 34. Her suffering and eventual escape (as revealed in the Epilogue) provide the counterpoint: while Natalie believes God speaks through Mary, the novel shows Mary as a traumatized child who eventually writes her own truth in The Book of Mary.

Old Caleb represents institutionalized religious authority. He commands Natalie to “go talk to her” about Mary, framing emotional labor as “women’s business.” He is the enforcer of patriarchal piety, using God to justify his control.

Maeve and Shannon (the other children) exist in the system of Yesteryear, their needs often subordinated to spiritual narratives.

Symbol Connections

The steel trap can be read as the trap of performative faith: once you enter the logic of religious hypocrisy, it is nearly impossible to escape. The lapel microphone (if not literal, then as a symbol of surveillance) echoes Natalie’s sense that she is being watched by God. In Chapter 30, she feels “under surveillance … but only by Him.” The manosphere cabin represents the isolated, patriarchal space where faith is enforced through physical labor and gendered obedience. The chicken coop massacre —a violent act that likely occurs offstage—may symbolize the destructive consequences of a faith that demands absolute submission without compassion.

Complexity and Contradiction

The novel refuses to pick a side. It critiques religious hypocrisy mercilessly, yet it gives Natalie moments of authentic spiritual connection that the text does not dismiss as delusion. When she prays in the kitchen, the language is raw and intimate; she is not faking it. But that same faith leads her to ignore Mary’s autonomy, mistaking her daughter’s trauma for a divine message. The ultimate contradiction is that faith can be both a lifeline and a blindfold. The Epilogue, with Mary’s memoir, suggests that the healing comes not from faith but from telling one’s own story—a secular salvation. Yet the novel leaves room for believers to see divine providence in that escape as well.

Study Questions and Answers

1. How does Natalie’s early use of Scripture (Lot’s wife, the “whore” insult) foreshadow her later religious crisis?
   Answer: She weaponizes Bible verses to justify self-protection and cruelty, showing an early habit of using faith to avoid vulnerability. This habit later prevents her from seeing Mary as anything other than a vessel for God’s message.

2. In Chapter 30, why does Natalie simultaneously pray and attempt to avoid pregnancy? How does this scene complicate the theme of faith?
   Answer: The scene juxtaposes ecstatic submission (prayer) with bodily resistance (scraping out “Old Caleb”). It suggests that even in her most intense faith, Natalie retains a core of self-preservation that contradicts total surrender. Faith here is not monolithic but fractured.

3. What role does divine silence play in the novel’s critique of religious hypocrisy?
   Answer: During traumatic moments (the rape, the snowy woods, the final judgment), God does not intervene. This silence undermines the prosperity-gospel promise that faith guarantees safety. It forces Natalie—and the reader—to question whether the ecstatic experiences were self-generated.

4. How does Mary’s function as a “medium” for God in Chapter 34 actually reveal the limits of Natalie’s compassion?
   Answer: By interpreting Mary’s distress as a divine visitation, Natalie avoids the hard work of empathizing with her daughter. She uses faith as a buffer against emotional intimacy, a pattern that echoes her mother’s crisis management in Chapter 2.

5. Does the Epilogue, with Mary’s memoir, offer a resolution to the theme of faith? Is it hopeful or bleak?
   Answer: The resolution is bittersweet. Mary’s authorship reclaims her story from religious frameworks, suggesting that narrative autonomy is an alternative to imposed piety. Yet Natalie remains unforgiven, imprisoned, and silent—her faith has not redeemed her. The novel implies that productive faith must include self-critique and genuine listening, which Natalie never achieved.