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Title details for Women of Privilege by Susan Gillotti - Available

Women of Privilege

100 Years of Love & Loss in a Family of the Hudson River Valley

by Susan Gillotti
ebook
1 of 2 copies available
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1 of 2 copies available
Drawing on “a treasure trove of family records”, this biography of the women of a prominent Hudson Valley, New York family is “riveting and moving.” (Miriam Cohen, Evalyn Clark Professor of History, Vassar College)
Carolyn Heilbrun, in Writing a Woman’s Life, said there are far too few books about the real lives of women. Women of Privilege helps to fill that gap.
Susan Gillotti provides us an insight into her ancestors’ heretofore secret lives, culled from their private diaries, letters and journals. Up to now, these intimate narratives have been the private thoughts of four generations of women who inhabited Grasmere, one of the great houses of The Hudson River Valley, where they lived among the Delanos, the Vanderbilts and the Roosevelts.
On the surface, their lives seemed ideal, but beneath that facade, there were mental illness, alcoholism, yearning for divorce and questions of sexual identity.
Written by Susan Gillotti, the great-great-granddaughter of Sarah Minerva Schieffelin, this fascinating and revealing book is part biography, part memoir and part social history.
 
“A riveting read—one cannot stop until the final outcome of these powerful, but flawed, lives is revealed.” —Peter H. Brink, former senior vice president, Programs, National Trust for Historic Preservation
“Susan Gillotti weaves . . . the stories of her mother and grandmothers, bravely, sometimes desperately, trying to claim their independence from social straight jackets, and succeeding.” —Georgina Forbes, artist

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    May 24, 2022

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9780897337274

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9780897337274
      • File size: 8639 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Booklist

      June 1, 2013
      The title and cover photograph of Gillotti's family history suggest a proper, luxurious, cocooned world. Instead, she chronicles abuse, neglect, poverty, and madness, even though this mind-bending saga is anchored in Grasmere, a grand, old Hudson Valley mansion. Gillotti discovered the staggering truth about her legacy of trauma and tenacity as she worked her way through her late mother's secret collection of diaries and letters written by the women of Grasmere, beginning in 1876 with Gillotti's formidable, blue-blood great-great-grandmother, Sarah Minerva Schieffelin. The troubles begin with Sarah's son-in-law, Ernest Crosby, whom Sarah deemed a traitor to their class for his progressive views regarding child labor, immigrants, and the environment. But the real object of scandal was Gillotti's impossibly headstrong and cruel grandmother, who broke with her husband, roamed the country, lunged from one mad scheme to another, and subjected her daughter, Gillotti's mother, to epic cruelty. Gillotti tells the hidden, harrowing story of her family with judicious restraint, penetrating clarity, and considerable compassion, ensuring that the Grasmere women's struggles illuminate the shackling and persistent misogyny that not even privilege negates.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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