Not an easy read, especially post the New York part, and even in that, but perhaps one needs to be a bit familiar with social fabric of US and history thereof, where women at this period of time had not quite achieved parity (not that they have now, it is a curve sometimes closer to the asymptote and then again slashed back viciously by corporate interests), and while they were able to attend college and thereby expected to do brilliantly and also confirm to stereotype expectations anyway, but were often treated somewhere between callously and viciously, as indeed in most places with Judaic and especially church of Rome dominated or worse, that of complete veil or stoning to death cultures.
This book was probably one of the first to bring home to most people the fact that a woman could not only think but do so in a very erudite, complex, sophisticated way, and yet have sensitivity and more. Most works moreover dealing with the social phenomena of throwing unwanted women in mental asylums, or with mental breakdowns of brilliant people of either gender, deal with it from outside, and this is one of the inside views.
