In the century after her death, as the immediacy of her financial prowess receded, she slipped into obscurity, remembered (when remembered at all) as a mean old woman with too much money and too little heart. In her own time, she was regarded with a roughly equal mix of admiration for her financial skills and disdain for her parsimony. She therefore left it up to others to determine her legacy - and this process has not been kind to her. Unlike Carnegie, Morgan and Vanderbilt, who transformed their spotty reputations through philanthropy, Hetty Green left no monuments to herself. By casting off the trappings and social expectations of her time, she freed herself to do as she pleased, to live life on terms that she alone determined. “…Hetty’s madness, such as it was, served a vital purpose.
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