From the first pages of the The Bell Jar and throughout the whole novel, you gather that this story is taking place in a male-oriented world, where there's no space for a woman to be respected and for her wishes and ambitions to be taken seriously.

Naturally, the more intelligent, aspiring and determined women look for ways to escape this masculine "environment". And that's exactly what Esther Greenwood (or should I say Sylvia Plath) did.

Esther looks at the life of empowering women in her circle, especially those that are writers and figures that writing is her way out (even though she wants and can be so many other things at the same time.) of this life, this everyday suburban life where she's the subject of gossips just because she's not married and she doesn't want to have children.
But when that opportunity is denied from her she has a serious mental breakdown.

I deeply related to her from the first pages of the first chapter, but when I saw how her dreams and ambitions shattered in front of her eyes and she went to a path of self destructive behaviours and came to the conclusion that there's no other way out of this life other than killing herself, I felt her with all my heart. Because I also am in an environment where it's just as suffocating as a bell jar. And all my efforts and energies in my 20s are spent on becoming something that gets me out of here and every once in a while I imagine what would happen if it didn't work out and every time without an exception I get an anxiety attack.

So yes, maybe The Bell Jar wasn't my new all time favourite book given that the last third of the book got dragged out a bit, but Esther Greenwood is definitely my new favourite and relatable character in literature.