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However, Astell must first address one hurdle that is unique to the perception of her sex and one with which her male counterparts do not have to contend. In her seminal work, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, Astell identifies the origin of female folly as a deficiency in education, resulting in the inability to make sound moral choices, the proairesis necessary for virtue. She entreats her fellow women to abandon temporal concerns for the improvement of their eternal minds:

11 _{“Sweet bird that shunn'st the noise of folly, / Most musical, most melancholy!” (Milton, Il} Penseroso).

What your own sentiments are, I know not, but I cannot without pity and resentment reflect, that those Glorious Temples on which your kind Creator has bestow’d such exquisite workmanship, shou’d enshrine to better than Egyptian Deities, be like a tarnish’d Sepulchre, which for all its glittering, has nothing within but Emptiness or Putrefaction! (54)

She further exhorts her fellow women to “abandon that Old, and therefore one woul’d think, unfashionable employment of pursuing Butter flies and Trifles!” (55). Moreover, Astell asks women to “no longer drudge on in the dull beaten road of Vanity and Folly,” and to “break the enchanted Circle that custom has plac’d us in” (55). The “tyrant Custom” has denigrated women’s intellect and kept them chasing temporal and immediate fancies instead of preparing their minds for eternal, higher ideals.

Astell asserts in her proposal that folly itself is moral dilemma that prohibits right choices:

the Cause therefore of the defects we labour under, is, if not wholly, yet at least in the first place, to be ascribed to the mistakes of our Education; which like an Error in the first Concoction, spreads its ill Influence through all our Lives. (59-60) These defects, “ignorance and a narrow education, lay the Foundation of Vice, and Imitation and Custom rear it up” (Proposal 67). So-called accomplished women of Astell’s time were prepared for superficial graces, but ill-prepared for the mental acuteness needed for a virtuous life. This concern occupies much of the eighteenth-century discussions of women’s education, culminating in Mary Wollstonecraft’s argument for equal education for men and women. Moreover, the busyness of the social scene distracted them from the significant pursuit of knowledge that could

truly enrich their lives. Astell asserts that the distracted woman cannot hear the inner voice of God, and therefore she cannot exercise right reason:

Add to this the hurry and noise of the World, which does generally so busy and pre-ingage us, that we have little time, and less inclination to stand still and reflect on our own Minds…we cannot attend to the Dictates of our Reason, nor to the soft whispers and winning persuasive of the divine Spirit, but whose assistance were we dispos’d to make use of it, we might shake off these Follies, and regain our Freedom. (Proposal 68)

Astell asserts that women may “shake off” those trivial pursuits that hinder them from a mental awakening to the things of God. Only when the fanciful preconceptions of the female mind are overcome can women focus their attention to the larger, controversial discussions of the day from a feminine point of view.

Astell frequently uses strong language to force women to comprehend the dangers of fanciful thinking and take responsibility for their own minds and souls. Astell herself sought

to preserve herself from the interruption of frivolous visits, from such persons as relieve themselves from the burthen of time unemployed by breaking in upon their more rational and industrious acquaintance, she was accustomed, from her window, jestingly, to inform intruders that “Mrs. Astell was not at home.” (Hays 216)

In The Christian Religion, she describes “a happiness after our own wild Fancies, tho’ it be contrary to all the rules of order and right Reason” as a disappointment to the God who creates women with the same human nobility and divine image as men; furthermore, she explains “that God cannot gratify us in our Folly but by denying Himself, that is, by acting contrary to the

essential Perfections of His own Nature” (92). Astell’s insistence on cognizance on a higher plain may be seen as “tactfully upbraiding them for having preoccupied themselves with frivolity instead of great truths and religious duties” (Deluna 237). This insistence on higher learning and understanding has “the power to dignify women as the pursuit of physical beauty or of social amusement does not” (Deluna 231). Thus, Astell’s purpose for the admonition of abandoning the fanciful and surface accomplishments in her works,

contributed not a little towards awakening their minds and lessening their esteem for those trifling amusements which steal away too much of their time; and towards putting them upon employing their faculties the right way, in the pursuit of knowledge. (Ballard 307)

Therefore, to grant dignity and humanity to her sex, Astell attempts “to browbeat women for allowing themselves to be denigrated to the position of beautiful ‘object’ in their husband’s homes, for painting themselves with cosmetics, and for adorning themselves outwardly with little or no self-respect for their own minds” (Bryson 42). Jacqueline Broad describes women’s first right choice: “Above all, Astell offers advice on how a woman can learn to judge for herself about the true source of happiness, and come to live up to the dignity of her nature as a free and rational human being” (16). Ironically, Astell’s strongest argument for women’s education mirrors that of Milton’s treatise on marriage and divorce: just as an educated woman alleviates the misery of an intellectually unsuitable companion in the marriage relationship, an enlightened man allows for the intellectual progress of his wife.