Book Club Meets: Tradwives and the manosphere, with Caro Claire Burke
6/4/202631 min
Natalie Heller is a tradwife influencer online. She’s got the perfect life: a brood of beautiful children and a handsome cowboy husband who eat her homemade bread and jams in their gorgeous red barn. What her millions of followers don’t know is that she’s got a whole army of hidden staff and industrial kitchen appliances helping her out.
Then, one day... she wakes up in the 1800s, and is forced to live this traditional fantasy for real.
Yesteryear was our Happy Place Book Club read for May. In this chat, author Caro Claire Burke joins Fearne to talk about the manosphere, motherhood, religion, and modern feminism. Plus, what does Caro make of Anne Hathaway turning her book into a film?
In June, we’ll be reading Honey by Imani Thompson.
If you liked this episode of Happy Place, you might also like:
Book Club Meets: Josie Lloyd and Emlyn Rees
Book Club Meets: Maggie O’Farrell
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsSpeaker 10:00
[gentle music] I watched through the mirror as Clementine crossed the room and sat next to the girls on my bed. "What does tradwife mean?"
Fearne Cotton· Host0:08
Hello, and welcome to the Happy Place Book Club with me, Fern Cotton.
Speaker 10:12
"Who said that word to you?"
Fearne Cotton· Host0:14
Today, Yesteryear- "Well, is it bad?" ... by Caro Claire Burke.
Speaker 10:17
"Tradwife," Jessa said, and giggled. She threw her head back and said it again, "Tradwife." It almost seemed possible Clementine might hear the mechanical clicks of my brain as it whirred into warp speed, sorting through 500 possible answers to that question. My eldest daughter was like me, not just in likeness, but in disposition too. She held her intelligence like a knife behind her back. Now that she was creeping toward womanhood, I found our similarities a bit unnerving, like watching a clone of myself walk slowly toward me from a faraway point in the distance. What would happen when she arrived? I'm aware this isn't the kind of thing you're meant to feel about your own daughter, but motherhood is its own kind of curation, which is to say every woman I know lied to me about what it would be like before I became one myself.
Fearne Cotton· Host1:21
[upbeat music] Right. Now, Natalie Heller is a tradwife influencer online.