a two-dimensional world, a regular polygon can be identified by a single angle and/or vertex. To maintain social cohesion, irregularity is to be abhorred, with moral irregularity and criminality cited, "by some" (in the book), as inevitable additional deformities, a sentiment with which the Square concurs. If the error of deviation is above a stated amount, the irregular Polygon faces euthanasia; if below, he becomes the lowest rank of civil servant. An irregular Polygon is not destroyed at birth, but allowed to develop to see if the irregularity can be "cured" or reduced. If the deformity remains, the irregular is "painlessly and mercifully consumed." As social satire In Flatland, Abbott describes a society rigidly divided into classes. Social ascent is the main aspiration of its inhabitants, apparently granted to everyone but strictly controlled by the top of the hierarchy. Freedom is despised and the laws are cruel. Innovators are imprisoned or suppressed. Members of lower classes who are intellectually valuable, and potential leaders of riots, are either killed or promoted to the higher classes. Every attempt for change is considered dangerous and harmful. This world is not prepared to receive "revelations from another world". The satirical part is mainly concentrated in the first part of the book, "This World", which describes Flatland. The main points of interest are the Victorian concept of women's roles in the society and in the class-based hierarchy of men. Abbott has been accused of misogyny due to his portrayal of women in Flatland. In his Preface to the Second and Revised Edition, 1884, he answers such critics by emphasizing that the description of women was satirizing the viewpoints held, stating that the Square: Critical reception Although Flatland was not ignored when it was published, it did not obtain great success. In the entry on Edwin Abbott in the Dictionary of National Biography for persons who died in the period of 1922 to 1930, Flatland was not even mentioned. The book was discovered again after Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity was published, which brought to prominence the concept of a fourth dimension. Flatland was mentioned in a letter by William Garnett entitled "Euclid, Newton and Einstein" published in Nature on 12 February 1920. In this letter, Abbott is depicted, in a sense, as a prophet due to his intuition of the importance of time to explain certain phenomena: The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography subsequently