Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection, ca. 1380–95, is a contemplative guide for a female anchorite, implicitly addressing wider groups of lay men and women. Ordained as an Augustinian canon, Hilton aligns his guide with many of the Church’s mainstream practices. The anchorite becomes a bulwark against the threats of heresy and hypocrisy, as the Church perceived increased threats from groups like the so-called lollards and Heretics of the Free Spirit. In many strains of Judeo-Christian theology, femininity found associations with the body, emotion, and sin. In the figure of the holy woman, Hilton finds a subject to treat the relationship between rational and affective forms of knowledge, and the intractability of sin. The solitary becomes a model for lay people, who, in late-medieval England, were increasingly interested in contemplation.