Woman was Andrejs Upīts’ first significant novel and has been republished numerous times and widely discussed. It was the work with which he first gained notoriety in Latvian literature. When it was published, he had only recently left his teaching position, and the book’s popularity allowed him to turn his full attention to writing. Critics consider the change of setting – from the countryside to the city (i.e., from an environment which tends towards complete order to an environment where absolute chaos is a constant) – as the greatest influence Sieviete and other works by Upīts around the same time had on Latvian literature. These works brought radical changes to the principles of Latvian novel writing.