Women of Privilege

Women of Privilege traces the decline of a once-privileged Hudson River Valley family where the neighbours were Vanderbilts, Delanos, and Roosevelts. Susan Gillotti provides us an insight into her ancestors' heretofore secret lives, culled from private diaries, letters, and journals of the three generations of women who inhabited Grasmere - one of the great houses of the Hudson River Valley. On the surface, their lives seem ideal, but beneath that facade, there was mental illness, alcoholism, yearning for divorce, and questions of sexual identity.