One Good Paragraph (Bell Jar)...

In a strange way, Esther's harsh life experience provides her with the Reward(s) she needed and wanted to recover from her mental illness. The loss of her virginity and the loss of her friend, Joan, both seem to quiet down her rampet mind, and Esther seems to undergo large scale maturation in light of the tragic events. Although, the process of losing her virginity caused her much bodily harm, and she knew her failed suicide attempt prompted Joan to take her own life, Esther also learns how to empathize with others. The Road Back comes to play when Esther returns to college where she strives to take back her life with a fresh new start. She begins her "new life" by removing all the entities which took part of her former life: her friends, the doctors at Belsize, and even her first sexual partner. Esther now stands with newly found strength and power over herself even while understanding the posibility of a reoccurance of her mental illness.