John Milton dedicated his life to forming a path to virtue for men to follow that included education, contemplation, divine illumination, and right reason. Milton promises that his path will lead others to a life of reason and a paradise within. Eighteenth-century women responded to Milton’s formula for virtue and appropriated his path for their own enlightenment. This project examines the way in which three eighteenth-century women, Mary Astell, Lady Mary Chudleigh, and Elizabeth Carter, incorporated Milton’s path to virtue into their writing and into their lives to redefine virtue for women.