Perhaps because some readers of Roger's Version failed to see the novel's connection with The Scarlet Letter, the third and final novel in John Updike's “The Scarlet Letter Trilogy”, S., opens with two quotations taken from The Scarlet Letter. The first quotation refers to Hester's physical description – “she had dark and abundant hair, … how her beauty shone out, and made a halo of the misfortune and ignominy in which she was enveloped.” This is a physical description with a spiritual component – she has a halo, almost as if she were a saint. The following quotation (“much of the marble coldness of Hester's impression was to be attributed to the circumstance that her life had turned, in great measure, from passion and feeling, to thought. … The world's law was no law for...
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Citation: Gomez-Galisteo, M. Carmen. "S". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 30 October 2009 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=12963, accessed 13 December 2025.]
