It started with the antiheroine, the female protagonist we’re not sure if we like or not because maybe she’s too quirky, a little too privileged, or more outspoken than we would ordinarily be. Now, we have full-on tradwives with MAGA-coded in-laws.
I’m of course talking about Caro Claire Burke’s debut novel, Yesteryear (Knopf; April 2026)—and I’m not complaining! I devoured the book, cover to cover, when my library hold came in. The novel follows Natalie Heller Mills, an Instagram tradwife influencer who mysteriously ends up back in the nineteenth century with no idea of how to get home. I won’t say anything else for fear of spoilers, but that’s such a remarkable hook (and well executed!) that Anne Hathaway is already helming a film adaptation of the book.
It’s not just happening full-length fiction either. The opening story of Best American Short Stories 2025, “Dominion” (Lauren Acampora, New England Review), follows Roy, a Boomer man who would probably self-describe as fiscally conservative and who has used his riches to build a zoological park on his property. It leads to an ill-fated kindergarten field trip and some class conflict, but it’s told without apology or self-awareness from Roy’s perspective. For these reasons and more, it’s a delicious read, which I tell myself gives me a little more insight into the way some folks think.
The beauty of both of these vehicles (Yesteryear and “Dominion”) is how one can safely assume that the author does not sympathize with their protagonist’s politics but is, at one and the same time, sympathizing with them in some way. Otherwise, why get inside their heads for the length of time it takes to perfect a novel or a short story?
This is a trend I’ve been noticing lately: fiction as a means to write characters we hate and love to hate. I call it the White Lotus effect because, while Yesteryear and “Dominion” are two recent examples from the literary world, this trend has been noticeable for me in the arena of prestige television, notably HBO Max’s The White Lotus and Succession.
I’m not the only one noticing these trends. Anna Storti writes elegantly and knowledgeably about hateful characters in The White Lotus, recently for Public Books, describing a scene from the Thailand season (which I’ll admit I missed) in which Sam Rockwell’s character admits to a sexual fantasy in which he himself is the Asian girls he also desires.
“His failure to rid himself of desire felt personal,” she writes. “His humiliation was my vindication.”
This was how I felt reading Natalie’s story in Yesteryear. I had picked up Burke’s novel, like a lot of us presumably did, for the 2026-necessary Schadenfreude of watching a tradwife influencer get exactly what she thought she wanted.
Storti describes White Lotus as social satire, “[o]ffering commentary on wealth, sex, and spirituality.” The same could be said for Adam McKay’s Succession, which I struggled to enjoy, much less grasp as satire, the first time I watched it. Succession was the first show that had ever presented me with satirized characters I was supposed to hate (and love to hate) but also come to root for at the same time. I gave up after two episodes on my first watch, but a few years later, in time to watch the series finale live, I was all in, gasping when Tom offered Siobh his hand in the SUV. (You all know the moment I’m talking about.)
Like a memoir, these shows, if fictional, were unlocking the doors to boardrooms and presidential suites my life choices will never get close to opening for me. They showed how the other half lived and explained, even if it was twisted, the logic behind their choices.
Is this okay to do, though?
“It’s one thing for a show to mock the follies and dysfunctions of the wealthy and white,” Storti continues. “The people can get behind that. Portraying the fall of the mighty is easy money, low-hanging fruit. Eat the rich! What’s riskier and harder to swallow are the moments when the viewer comes into contact with the white elite’s racist fantasies, which include the tendencies of prestige TV and its insufficient depictions of people of color.”
I totally agree. We’re not just pooh-poohing these characters. By virtue of them being our protagonists, we’re supposed to root for them and in some ways identify with them. Does that make us complicit in their thoughts, words, and deeds?
Caro Claire Burke recently shared to her Instagram screenshots from the Substack of Brittany Walker, an ex-Mormon ADHD coach, who related to Natalie, to the simmering anger and the constant vigilance and sense of being tested that underlie her “Online Natalie” veneer. It’s a fabulous essay on how this novel is impacting the audience it was specifically written for.
Meanwhile, I’m grateful to say I’m far out enough from the evangelical world (and have worked through enough trauma) to not have high-control religious surveillance drilled into me to this level any longer. No matter how long I read, Natalie Heller Mills felt monstrous to me, and even as I sympathized with her in some ways, I wanted to see her taken down. I was reading about her fictional life in a similar way to the way I watch reality TV.
I mentioned being fascinated by the premise of a tradwife influencer getting exactly what she (thought she) wanted; what kept me turning pages was the need to know how she was going to get back to the present day/through which means she was “sent back.” (No spoilers here! The book is so very bingeable. Go read it so I can talk to you about it.)
And for those who relate to Natalie’s high-control upbringing, I hope Storti’s next statement is relatable, too: “Satire presents us with a looking glass. It works best when one is in on the joke, or, at the very least, willing and open to laugh. [… S]attire, as a mode of constructive social criticism, should provoke reflection, and, perhaps, change.”
Is this what we’re hoping will happen when we watch Jennifer Coolidge on White Lotus or preorder a book about a tradwife influencer? I’m not so sure.
Of course, this effect is nothing new. Antiheroes and out-and-out villains have regularly had leading roles for at least a generation. One of the last big cable masterpieces, Breaking Bad, which one could argue satirized the extreme lengths the American medical system can take one to, comes to mind. But Breaking Bad’s creator, Vince Gilligan, has recently argued against valorizing the bad guy.
While accepting the Paddy Chayefsky Laurel Award for Television Writing Achievement last year, Gilligan was, in a way and though neither of them could know it, in direct conversation with Storti. Although Gilligan was of course proud of his writing and showrunning credits, he called into question how popular the villain as protagonist has become. If satire reveals a world in need of change but nothing is done to address it, does the satire become “aspirational”? “If you have enough stories with bad guys in it,” Gilligan asked, “who are we supposed to root for?”
So, does our desire to read about and get in the heads of morally complex people come from a place of vengeful wish fulfillment? From a place of seeking and understanding so we can make things better? Are the nuances that these people contribute to their own misery and to ours (e.g., Natalie helping her father-in-law’s political campaigns gain traction in the manosphere and tradwife movements) enough?
Again, I don’t think I have any answers for you. It’s just really interesting when you think of how scared I’ve been to write about certain people for a long time because it felt like I risked identifying them and seeming like I shared their moral and political beliefs. Now it’s in vogue, and probably propped up by the book club crowd, who have the space to discuss the nuance—and by the rest of us, who will hopefully vote to make things better.