 As Astell sees it, the problem that faces the female novice is that she has a diseased mind as the result of social conditioning. This diseased mind manifests in part as a particular skeptical predicament: she has a radical doubt about her nature, for she believes God made her with a degraded reason. That is, she adopts the prejudice that she is incapable of improvement because she is naturally proud and vain (Astell 2002, 58, 62). Gripped with this skeptical predicament, she has no desire to improve her mind, and she lacks an ability to understand her perfections, which would otherwise guide her in living a virtuous life (Astell 2002, 80–1, 200, 202, 228).