There are so many unsettling aspects to this book, but probably the most terrible - as you noted - is the fact that the abusive husband is contorted into a sympathetic character. IIRC Burke gave an interview saying that if the husband had married another person, he probably would have just been a nice, normal guy!!! So it’s NATALIE’S fault she was abused, right? If a man wrote this book, everyone would be rightfully horrified.
I think sometimes secular writers/audiences have a hard time understanding people can actually believe in what they profess, and that’s part of what CCB ran up against here.
Also I feel like the historical thing was weird. Like I get it—I get it. And some historical eras were awful—I’m in well-read mom, I read about North Dakota and PPD last fall. But also I’ve read extensively of letters and journals of women during the civil war and revolution (because I’m a nerd), and like…not everyone in the past was living some Hobbesian hell? Like…yes there are parts of history I wouldn’t want to experience: the Black Death is pretty high on the list, shortly beating out most of Russian serf life and Civil War hospital. But not all of history was that.
These aren’t well-formed thoughts. It just is weird to act like that was normative. Was life hard? Yes? It still is in many places. But it’s not entirely Hobbesian for all involved in all of history until like 1970.
Clarification—of course people who literally enslaved during the civil war were in a kind of Hobbesian hell. Absolutely. But like ye old Massachusetts housewife in Boston whose husband owned a thriving business and went to her abolitionist church was just not living the same life as even a comparably realistic portrayal of someone breaking ground in the Dakotas (fwiw, I would also not want to homestead the Dakotas—no fiction had ever made me think myself even a little suited to it) or someone literally being dehumanized by the horror of slavery.
But the Boston gal probably had a…pretty decent life? One people even today might prefer legitimately to like laboring as a slave on a shrimp boat or textile mill that locks the door during a fire or as a child enslaved sex worker?
Yes and yes to all of this! It's very easy to downplay the good stuff and hype up the bad when writing about a specific time period (looking at you, 1923). I think there's a certain amount of shock value too that writers can get invested in. I remember reading Follow the River, which I felt like was a more balanced book about a woman living her life on a frontier. The author, James Alexander Thom, gives her a very rich inner life that is full of doubt, decisions, and desire. That was one of the first books I ever read where female pleasure was just considered a matter of fact thing that she (naturally) would have been thinking about rather than something to keep hushed up. Might be a good palate cleanser if you need one.
I have not read the book but I think this speaks to a larger trend of female writers (for all media) having a sort of punishment fetish for the trad/crunchy/conservative/etc female characters they are attempting to portray.
I love this. Haven't read the book but as someone who knows and loves real women who have 8 or 10 kids and are religious I am wary of attempts to hate on every single woman "like that." If women in religious communities are "programmed" to be SAHM moms, why aren't progressive women "programmed" to have children after completing degrees and not more than 2? Programmed to "do it all" and then divorce their husbands? Everybody in every culture faces pressure to conform, not just trad wives.... the white feminist gaze thinks nobody "actually wants to be Muslim, or Mormon, or SAHM" yeah some people do. I know them.
Welcome back, and great review! I was so excited to read this book that I actually bought it in hardcover (I usually try to be responsible and wait for it at the library, or see if the audiobook version is included in Spotify.) I was so disappointed. I donated my copy to our local library, because they have a crazy wait list, but I think a lot of other people will be disappointed too. The lack of empathy is a big thing....I did a lot of Shakespeare in Performance classes in college, and the actors we worked with would talk a lot about how, even when playing a bad guy, you have to get into a headspace where their actions and reasoning make sense for them. I think that Burke overlooked that while some tradwife influencers are undoubtedly cynical grifters, some genuinely do believe stuff like that asking your husband to wash his hands before sitting down to eat is disrespectful. One woman actually said, "Better that your family die of plague than for you to be a disrespectful wife." That's even more scary, honestly. And then it is so, so transparently based on Ballerina Farm (Ballerina Farm anti-fanfiction), that I often found myself referring to the characters as Hannah and Daniel, not Natalie and Caleb.
On the question of empathy, if I’ve learned anything in my twelve years in NYC is that Christianity is in the category of self-evident moral evil for some people. It would be like asking them to feel empathy or curiosity for a pedophile. In fact, that might be easier for them because they, at least, are not Christian women.
Christian women provoke a special revulsion in these types because they are seen as traitors, collaborators with patriarchy. Secular liberal women can understand why men would want to preserve Christianity; it serves them. Whereas Christian women violate the expected narrative of emancipation: woman is educated, becomes sexually autonomous, professionally ambitious, secular, politically progressive, suspicious of anything that might impinge even a little bit on any part of that. But heaven forfend if a woman actually believes in the teachings of Christianity. She cannot have found any truth or beauty in it, she’s either brainwashed or a stupid fat cow participating in her own subjection.
Great post Helen! Welcome back. This is an aside, but I have never understood the hate that Hannah Neeleman gets. There are entire Substacks dedicated to writing angry things about her and I just ... like ... don't understand at all. Neeleman is not my cup of tea either, but: I just don't pay any attention to her consequently. Why are there so many people spending energy hating this lady?!?
Every time I see an article I think the same! Like just dont consume her content??? I don’t think I’d know about Hannah were it not for all of her haters.
I've thought about this a lot because of all the influencers out there, the one that stokes your ire is the mom who films videos of her milking cows and baking bread?! Not the women showing off their Birkin bags and posing at cafe tables with their $10 ice coffees?! It's not ok to waste energy hating anyone, but you're so right that the hatred of Neeleman is genuine bizarre and very revealing! But of what? I think jealousy. Her posts seem to exude an authentic kind of happiness, while the happiness of the woman posing with her Birkin bag is too easy to see through.
I think it’s because she is a one-two punch that’s not supposed to be possible: successful entrepreneur but also enormously happy mother of 9. That’s why they focus so much on her husband coming from wealth… to downplay her success.
There are lots of women on the internet making content about homemaking, homesteading, raising kids, sourdough etc. They hate Hannah Neeleman because she is skinny and rich. That’s it, it’s not deeper than that as far as I can tell.
Great review, haven't read the book yet but was tempted to check it out to formulate my own opinion... but I don't have much of an appetite for authors who can't have a bit of empathy for their own unlikeable characters. Too bad. The liberal tendency to be smug and incurious about religious people's inner experiences makes for some bad writing
"It felt spiteful. It felt like propaganda. It felt like beating a dead horse. The goal of this book, despite Burke’s stated aim, was not to understand. It was to humiliate. It is, in essence, revenge porn."
Honestly, I think this is too generous. This is what I was expecting from it, but it was so incoherent and downright nonsensical that it didn't even manage to do that, if that's what it was aiming for. Tbh, it was barely even about tradwives in reality - so little of the story or of Natalie's character hit any relevant notes for the tradwife discourse, regardless of where you stand in that conversation. It just read like she had an idea, bashed it out in a frenzy, and didn't bother to read it back through to see if it made any sense, much less submit it to professional editors.
Not having the relevant personal experiences ofc inhibited her but I feel like given this description, she wasn’t even doing research that could have helped her bridge that gap. Like… has she read Paul’s letters?? Or idk, some Marilynne Robinson???
Any recommendations for novels that DO understand the perspective and interiority of women who live in trad Christian communities/the complexity of what it’z actually like to be a religious woman? These Burke-esque takes on trad/religious women make me feel like I’m living on another planet.
Alternatively: who do we nominate to write the novel I actually want to read?
So the author was a terminally-online influencer on Tiktok (of all things) before writing a book? AND she was never religious? I feel like that explains so much!
Sorry but it’s abundantly clear that CCB, who, like me, worked in lifestyle editorial during the 2010s, was writing for the attention economy—or, more accurately, for the digital media audience and cadence we had back then. I'd like to think if she had the time, she would have interviewed women who still identify as Mormon or Evangelical instead of attending a "tradwife bootcamp" (??) or lurking Reddit threads. But she was likely working within the guidelines she internalized while at KCM.
“Burke even gives Natalie’s husband, Caleb—who rapes and beats his wife in the “before times” setting, mind you—more legible vulnerabilities, more complicated human motivations, than she gives Natalie.”
There are so many unsettling aspects to this book, but probably the most terrible - as you noted - is the fact that the abusive husband is contorted into a sympathetic character. IIRC Burke gave an interview saying that if the husband had married another person, he probably would have just been a nice, normal guy!!! So it’s NATALIE’S fault she was abused, right? If a man wrote this book, everyone would be rightfully horrified.
!!!!!!!
yikes
Oh my gosh
I think sometimes secular writers/audiences have a hard time understanding people can actually believe in what they profess, and that’s part of what CCB ran up against here.
Also I feel like the historical thing was weird. Like I get it—I get it. And some historical eras were awful—I’m in well-read mom, I read about North Dakota and PPD last fall. But also I’ve read extensively of letters and journals of women during the civil war and revolution (because I’m a nerd), and like…not everyone in the past was living some Hobbesian hell? Like…yes there are parts of history I wouldn’t want to experience: the Black Death is pretty high on the list, shortly beating out most of Russian serf life and Civil War hospital. But not all of history was that.
These aren’t well-formed thoughts. It just is weird to act like that was normative. Was life hard? Yes? It still is in many places. But it’s not entirely Hobbesian for all involved in all of history until like 1970.
Clarification—of course people who literally enslaved during the civil war were in a kind of Hobbesian hell. Absolutely. But like ye old Massachusetts housewife in Boston whose husband owned a thriving business and went to her abolitionist church was just not living the same life as even a comparably realistic portrayal of someone breaking ground in the Dakotas (fwiw, I would also not want to homestead the Dakotas—no fiction had ever made me think myself even a little suited to it) or someone literally being dehumanized by the horror of slavery.
But the Boston gal probably had a…pretty decent life? One people even today might prefer legitimately to like laboring as a slave on a shrimp boat or textile mill that locks the door during a fire or as a child enslaved sex worker?
Yes and yes to all of this! It's very easy to downplay the good stuff and hype up the bad when writing about a specific time period (looking at you, 1923). I think there's a certain amount of shock value too that writers can get invested in. I remember reading Follow the River, which I felt like was a more balanced book about a woman living her life on a frontier. The author, James Alexander Thom, gives her a very rich inner life that is full of doubt, decisions, and desire. That was one of the first books I ever read where female pleasure was just considered a matter of fact thing that she (naturally) would have been thinking about rather than something to keep hushed up. Might be a good palate cleanser if you need one.
I have not read the book but I think this speaks to a larger trend of female writers (for all media) having a sort of punishment fetish for the trad/crunchy/conservative/etc female characters they are attempting to portray.
Also “feministly” as an adjective 😆
I love this. Haven't read the book but as someone who knows and loves real women who have 8 or 10 kids and are religious I am wary of attempts to hate on every single woman "like that." If women in religious communities are "programmed" to be SAHM moms, why aren't progressive women "programmed" to have children after completing degrees and not more than 2? Programmed to "do it all" and then divorce their husbands? Everybody in every culture faces pressure to conform, not just trad wives.... the white feminist gaze thinks nobody "actually wants to be Muslim, or Mormon, or SAHM" yeah some people do. I know them.
I know them too. Good insight here. Also haven’t read the book.
Welcome back, and great review! I was so excited to read this book that I actually bought it in hardcover (I usually try to be responsible and wait for it at the library, or see if the audiobook version is included in Spotify.) I was so disappointed. I donated my copy to our local library, because they have a crazy wait list, but I think a lot of other people will be disappointed too. The lack of empathy is a big thing....I did a lot of Shakespeare in Performance classes in college, and the actors we worked with would talk a lot about how, even when playing a bad guy, you have to get into a headspace where their actions and reasoning make sense for them. I think that Burke overlooked that while some tradwife influencers are undoubtedly cynical grifters, some genuinely do believe stuff like that asking your husband to wash his hands before sitting down to eat is disrespectful. One woman actually said, "Better that your family die of plague than for you to be a disrespectful wife." That's even more scary, honestly. And then it is so, so transparently based on Ballerina Farm (Ballerina Farm anti-fanfiction), that I often found myself referring to the characters as Hannah and Daniel, not Natalie and Caleb.
Thank you, Lydia! Great points
Well said, brava!
On the question of empathy, if I’ve learned anything in my twelve years in NYC is that Christianity is in the category of self-evident moral evil for some people. It would be like asking them to feel empathy or curiosity for a pedophile. In fact, that might be easier for them because they, at least, are not Christian women.
Christian women provoke a special revulsion in these types because they are seen as traitors, collaborators with patriarchy. Secular liberal women can understand why men would want to preserve Christianity; it serves them. Whereas Christian women violate the expected narrative of emancipation: woman is educated, becomes sexually autonomous, professionally ambitious, secular, politically progressive, suspicious of anything that might impinge even a little bit on any part of that. But heaven forfend if a woman actually believes in the teachings of Christianity. She cannot have found any truth or beauty in it, she’s either brainwashed or a stupid fat cow participating in her own subjection.
Great post Helen! Welcome back. This is an aside, but I have never understood the hate that Hannah Neeleman gets. There are entire Substacks dedicated to writing angry things about her and I just ... like ... don't understand at all. Neeleman is not my cup of tea either, but: I just don't pay any attention to her consequently. Why are there so many people spending energy hating this lady?!?
Every time I see an article I think the same! Like just dont consume her content??? I don’t think I’d know about Hannah were it not for all of her haters.
I've thought about this a lot because of all the influencers out there, the one that stokes your ire is the mom who films videos of her milking cows and baking bread?! Not the women showing off their Birkin bags and posing at cafe tables with their $10 ice coffees?! It's not ok to waste energy hating anyone, but you're so right that the hatred of Neeleman is genuine bizarre and very revealing! But of what? I think jealousy. Her posts seem to exude an authentic kind of happiness, while the happiness of the woman posing with her Birkin bag is too easy to see through.
I think it’s because she is a one-two punch that’s not supposed to be possible: successful entrepreneur but also enormously happy mother of 9. That’s why they focus so much on her husband coming from wealth… to downplay her success.
Oh and she’s beautiful 😜
This is the real question Ivana. This level of obsession is bizarre.
There are lots of women on the internet making content about homemaking, homesteading, raising kids, sourdough etc. They hate Hannah Neeleman because she is skinny and rich. That’s it, it’s not deeper than that as far as I can tell.
Great review, haven't read the book yet but was tempted to check it out to formulate my own opinion... but I don't have much of an appetite for authors who can't have a bit of empathy for their own unlikeable characters. Too bad. The liberal tendency to be smug and incurious about religious people's inner experiences makes for some bad writing
"It felt spiteful. It felt like propaganda. It felt like beating a dead horse. The goal of this book, despite Burke’s stated aim, was not to understand. It was to humiliate. It is, in essence, revenge porn."
Honestly, I think this is too generous. This is what I was expecting from it, but it was so incoherent and downright nonsensical that it didn't even manage to do that, if that's what it was aiming for. Tbh, it was barely even about tradwives in reality - so little of the story or of Natalie's character hit any relevant notes for the tradwife discourse, regardless of where you stand in that conversation. It just read like she had an idea, bashed it out in a frenzy, and didn't bother to read it back through to see if it made any sense, much less submit it to professional editors.
I’m so glad you’re back. I’m a Helen Roy fan for life!!!
❤️❤️❤️
I ardently agree! Please start a podcast and write a novel!🙏💗
Aw thank you ❤️
Not having the relevant personal experiences ofc inhibited her but I feel like given this description, she wasn’t even doing research that could have helped her bridge that gap. Like… has she read Paul’s letters?? Or idk, some Marilynne Robinson???
Any recommendations for novels that DO understand the perspective and interiority of women who live in trad Christian communities/the complexity of what it’z actually like to be a religious woman? These Burke-esque takes on trad/religious women make me feel like I’m living on another planet.
Alternatively: who do we nominate to write the novel I actually want to read?
follow @Elena Trueba !!!
Ruth, by Kate Riley, is about a conservative Anabaptist woman and is wonderful.
So the author was a terminally-online influencer on Tiktok (of all things) before writing a book? AND she was never religious? I feel like that explains so much!
Sorry but it’s abundantly clear that CCB, who, like me, worked in lifestyle editorial during the 2010s, was writing for the attention economy—or, more accurately, for the digital media audience and cadence we had back then. I'd like to think if she had the time, she would have interviewed women who still identify as Mormon or Evangelical instead of attending a "tradwife bootcamp" (??) or lurking Reddit threads. But she was likely working within the guidelines she internalized while at KCM.
“Burke even gives Natalie’s husband, Caleb—who rapes and beats his wife in the “before times” setting, mind you—more legible vulnerabilities, more complicated human motivations, than she gives Natalie.”
Many such cases. It’s the Skylar White effect.