Surveillance and Control in Yesteryear

The Many Gaze of Yesteryear

In Yesteryear, Caro Claire Burke argues that surveillance is never neutral—it is always a tool of control. The novel traces Natalie Heller Mills as she moves through layers of being watched: by online audiences, by hidden cameras, by patriarchal figures, and ultimately by a God who seems to demand submission. Each layer erodes her autonomy and commodifies her suffering. By the novel's end, the reader understands that control through surveillance is not limited to one system; it is a pervasive feature of the world Natalie inhabits, whether she is performing for the Angry Women or trapped in a test devised by her Maker.

Part One: The Influencer’s Panopticon

Natalie’s life as a homesteading influencer is defined by constant, invisible monitoring. She records endless videos of cooking, childcare, and farm chores—always aware that the “Angry Women” watch her every move. In Chapter 36, she reflects on the lessons she has learned since going viral: “The goal of an influencer is not to be lovable, and it is not to be unbearable. The goal is to be both at once. In other words: addicting.” This insight reveals how the audience’s gaze controls her performance; she must gauge what will keep them engaged, even if it means flattening her own personality.

The phone stand she buys from Amazon, with its “wire neck like an octopus leg,” symbolizes the fragile apparatus that holds her performance together. When it fails, she must wedge cookbooks around it—a perfect metaphor for the improvised scaffolding of her public image. Her father-in-law, Doug, adds another layer of surveillance: he demands she use her platform to boost his political career. In Chapter 44, she refuses to “get political on my page” but later finds herself recording Doug’s private moments, weaponizing the same tool that monitors her. This contradiction shows how surveillance can be both a cage and a weapon.

Part Two: The Hidden Microphone and the Reality Show

After Natalie wakes in the anachronistic version of her home, she finds a broken lapel microphone buried in the dirt. In Chapter 13, she “scrutinizes the little black nub” and immediately suspects she is on a reality show: “I haven’t been taken away to some faraway film set—but perhaps the film set has come to me.” The discovery shatters her sense of reality. As she limps toward the chicken coop, she feels “someone is watching me. I know it.” The microphone becomes proof that her suffering is being recorded and consumed, just like her influencer content.

In Chapter 15, she runs a paranoid internal monologue comparing her situation to the reality television she watched in college. She reasons that “it is entirely possible that a reality show premiering in the next few years would allow a man to hit a woman and knock her out”—referencing the slap and the steel trap that nearly severs her foot. The trap, like the microphone, is a literal instrument of control disguised as narrative. Natalie’s suspicion that she is being revealed for an audience’s entertainment underscores how the surveillance gaze reduces her to a spectacle.

Part Three: Divine Surveillance and the Loss of Self

In Chapter 29, after Old Caleb rapes her, Natalie undergoes a chilling shift. She no longer believes in the reality show theory. Instead, she concludes: “I’m under surveillance in this house, yes—but only by Him. This, all of this, is a test.” The lapel microphone she found now seems irrelevant; she imagines God as the ultimate producer, watching to see what she is capable of. During the assault, she recites scripture—“fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen”—and experiences a transcendent vision of light. This scene reveals the novel’s darkest irony: the same system of control that commodified her body as an influencer now subsumes her into a religious framework that tells her her suffering is meaningful.

Yet even this divine gaze is not liberating. It demands her submission, just as the Angry Women demanded her perfection. Natalie’s internal shift from reality-show paranoia to religious acceptance shows how surveillance can be internalized until it feels like love. She never escapes being watched; she only transfers her belief about who is watching.

Characters and Symbols of Control

Natalie is both subject and object of surveillance. She stalks her own followers to learn “what they posted about, who they claimed to be,” turning the gaze back on them. Caleb and Old Caleb represent different forms of patriarchal control: one enabling her performance, the other exploiting it. Mary, the daughter who becomes the memoirist, reclaims narrative control in the epilogue. Shannon, the nanny who films Doug secretly, shows how the tools of surveillance can be turned inward.

The lapel microphone and the steel trap are twin symbols of hidden observation and sudden violence. The manosphere cabin and the chicken coop massacre serve as stages where the control is enacted—the cabin as a prison of patriarchal tradition, the coop as a prelude to the slaughter of innocence. Each symbol reinforces the theme that surveillance is never passive; it always leads to control.

Complexity and Contradiction

The novel refuses to offer a clear villain. Natalie herself is complicit in the surveillance economy: she researches her followers, manipulates her image, and even films Doug without his consent. Her realization that “America hates women. What a comfort to remember” suggests she uses misogyny as a survival tool, but this only deepens her entrapment. The most profound contradiction lies in her final interpretation of the surveillance: she moves from believing she is on a reality show to believing she is in a divine test. Both interpretations strip her of agency, yet she clings to each as a way to make sense of her helplessness. Burke forces readers to ask whether any form of being watched can ever be free of control.

Study Questions and Answers

1. How does the lapel microphone challenge Natalie’s understanding of reality?
   The microphone makes her suspect she is on a reality show, turning her suffering into entertainment. It blurs the line between the performed life she led as an influencer and the seemingly “real” violence of the past, suggesting that both are equally scripted and observed.

2. Compare the surveillance in Natalie’s influencer life to that in the past setting.
   In her influencer life, she is watched by an anonymous online audience; in the past, she is watched by hidden producers or God. Both systems demand that she perform idealized femininity and punish deviation. The difference is that the past’s surveillance is physical and visceral, while the influencer’s is digital but no less controlling.

3. Why does Natalie ultimately accept the surveillance as divine rather than as a reality show?
   During the rape, she experiences a supernatural vision that feels like love. Accepting the divine gaze allows her to reframe her suffering as meaningful—part of a test ordained by God. This is psychologically more manageable than believing she is being abused for entertainment, but it also surrenders her last ounce of agency.

4. How does Mary’s memoir reclaim control?
   In the epilogue, Mary writes The Book of Mary, which tells the story from her perspective, finally giving voice to the silenced child. By publishing her narrative, Mary transforms the surveillance that dominated her mother’s life into a tool of resistance, allowing readers to see the full scope of the control.

5. Discuss the role of the Angry Women as both audience and surveillors.
   The Angry Women are the online followers who demand perfection and tear Natalie apart. They embody the crowd that controls through its attention. Yet Natalie also studies them, learning their frustrations and desires. The novel suggests that in a surveillance society, everyone is both watcher and watched, and complicity is nearly impossible to escape.