The umbrella in particular is remembered as the symbol of the nineteenth century’s disturbing obsession with individualism. In Bellamy’s utopia, umbrellas have been replaced with retractable canopies so that everyone is protected from the rain equally.
“In the nineteenth century,” explains a character, “when it rained, the people of Boston put up three hundred thousand umbrellas over as many heads, and in the twentieth century they put up one umbrella over all the heads.”