Just as he had rewritten classical and biblical myths in The Centaur and Couples and Shakespeare’s Hamlet in his Gertrude and Claudius, John Updike sought to rewrite Nathaniel Hawthorne’s masterpiece The Scarlet Letter in the light of contemporary American life and religious values. The result was his “The Scarlet Letter Trilogy”, consisting of A Month of Sundays (1985), Roger’s Version (1986) and S. (1988).
In the first novel in the trilogy, Updike sought “to show how radically American attitudes have changed in regard to adulterous clergy. … As any bishop can tell you, modern clergymen tend to be quite unapologetic about where their bodies take them” (quoted in Greiner, 1989: 483-484). One of Updike’s most critically neglected works, A Month of Sundays is the diary that Thomas Marshfield, a minister removed from his parish...
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Citation: Gomez-Galisteo, M. Carmen. "A Month of Sundays". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 28 September 2009 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=7050, accessed 13 December 2025.]
