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There are few subjects that Metalious' work did not examine. Indeed, one of the most remarkable things about her work is how far-reaching and inclusive of our societal shortcomings it was. There isn't much that she didn't cover, with the exception of drug use, and that was because it wasn't much of a problem in New England at that time. Alcoholism, which was, is well covered. I believe that it is the plethora of issues that prove her book was a work of social protest. It was not intended to be a racy book but one that pointed out all the ways that so many people were barred from the much-touted American dream. Many of the barriers had nothing to do with gross family income, although poverty and all of its negative side effects were integral to the whole story. Much like Steinbeck's work, Peyton Place is a page-turning polemic.

Issues that are explored in the book include abortion, incest, illegitimacy, female sexuality, teenage sexuality, bias based on class, gender, ethnicity, race and religion, domestic violence, suicide, physical disability and poverty. The majority of these topics were not commonly written about or even discussed, and this sealed-lip sentiment literally came from the top and trickled down to even the farthest corners of the country, which was at the time in a strange sexual and political panic that compounded the situation. It took not just talent but courage to tell this story. By today's standards it isn't a shocking tale at all, and Grace never understood the wild reaction to her discussions of sexual matters. It was the sexually repressed society that she had written about that really overreacted, and just as the powers that were couldn't stop Elvis from gyrating, they couldn't stop many from reading the "dirty book" that everyone was talking about.

And it wasn't just sexually related topics that caused an uproar. Metalious had much to say about the way of life in New England, and probably many other parts of the country, starting with the rocky foundations that the towns were built on.

It's particularly telling that she chose to include a racist backdrop to the novel, when, set in an almost all-white state, she could have omitted it. Instead, Metalious has the town named for an escaped slave who moved north, married a white woman and built a castle high above the growing town that was named for him, so he would never have to see white people again. The town would forever live in the shadow of his legacy. She mentions "that lady from Massachusetts named Stowe" when one of the town elders is explaining about the "friggin' nigger." Dr. David Watters, UNH professor of English and director of the Center for New England Culture, explains that these passages "undermine the abolitionist credentials of earlier New Englanders in order to historicize the contemporary intolerance towards outsiders."

Metalious's staunchest defender has been scholar Ardis Cameron of the University of Southern Maine, who was instrumental in getting the 1999 edition of Peyton Place released, for which she wrote a forward. She makes copious pitches for Peyton Place as an important precursor to feminist literature, but also concedes that the protest was broader than that, stating that "In ways that would foreshadow the modern feminist movement, Peyton Place turned the "private" into the political. By reinterpreting incest, wife beating, and poverty as signs of social as well as individual failure, Metalious turned "trash" into a powerful political commentary on gender relations and class privilege. In addition to calling attention to the subject of female reproductive rights, Metalious was groundbreaking in showing women as sexual beings, apparently to the great surprise of many.

And Metalious made it clear that it wasn't just income but class that could work against a child, saying how a girl could be considered "a born whore," her fate prescribed to her. Or how punitive illegitimacy was to a child, and how schools, parents' choices, accidents, reputations or even just gossip could make or break a kid in an overly rigid social structure. The book repeatedly shines a light on class bias, the us/ them mentality, as when the town doctor condemns the poor as parasites who live in "cesspools" and "produce kids by the dozen."

Analysis of her work as intentional protest is difficult because, wary of the public's abuse of her, she made few comments about her work. But it is evident in her writing. With just the abortion issue alone she was illustrating the unfairness of illegal abortion, especially in cases of rape, incest or the age of the mother, in an extremely convincing scenario. The idea that this type of an expose could be unintentional is itself not credible. In my favorite comment about her work, Vanity Fair writer Michael Callahan wrote in 2006 that the book was, "… what Grace intended it to be: a cultural bitch slap at the duplicitous notions of proper conduct in the age of Eisenhower." He also wrote that "Peyton Place is a hybrid of the literary and the sordid, Upton Sinclair by way of Forever Amber. … at its heart it is a manifesto, a blistering indictment of small town values, classism and racism--one that got lost in the titillating pages that Americans dog-eared and read behind closed blinds."

The book is historically significant for its shock value. It was filled with taboo topics that were not supposed to be discussed in polite society. That was the point. The public largely missed the point. The story itself, while not being overly sentimental, was attempting to elicit empathy. This is an area where Metalious was absolutely masterful. She elicits empathy for characters that society routinely ignored because of their unlikable or undesirable traits. For example, in the scene of the men locking themselves into a cellar on a hard cider drinking binge, she manages to elicit your sympathy and understanding, not your disgust, for who and what they are. She does this repeatedly; you root for the young lady of "loose morals," the girl who wants a career, another girl whose arm is torn off in an accident, the demented, syphilis-ridden abused wife who takes her own life, and Selena, even as she is bashing her father's head in with a fire poker. In fact, it was not just sexy passages, but these empathy-inducing episodes, that people were shocked by. But when the book didn't elicit empathy, it elicited rage. There was even an I "Hate Grace" group formed in her home town. (Metalious once said "You get angrier about the truth than you do about lies.")

It's important to note that the movie and television shows which followed (which made Mia Farrow and Ryan O'Neil stars) were not representative of the novel. What was done to Peyton Place in the film and television versions, insisting that the reality was the white picket fence façade which Metalious had kicked down, was a truly strange note in the history of American entertainment. (Perhaps actress Sandra Bullock, who in 2006 was reported to have an interest in starring in, and co-producing, a movie based on Emily Toth's biography, Inside Peyton Place: The Life of Grace Metalious, will hew closer to the truth.)

Unfortunately for Metalious and her family, critics went after her in addition to sanitizing her story. And her Hemingway-esque lifestyle set her up for the most vicious of personal attacks. So critics were able to shoot the messenger, and in denigrating the author were able to denigrate the book. Denigrating the book, and the white-washed movie and TV shows that followed, made real social change unlikely. And still she succeeded.

Cameron has made a strong case for Peyton Place as an important feminist text that preceded The Feminine Mystique by seven years. I think it is highly probable that it allowed for The Feminine Mystique to be written at all. Metalious was writing and talking about the very same issue, sexual and domestic containment and its harmful effects, years before The Feminine Mystique. Peyton Place is riddled with it, and in the Vanity Fair article, she is quoted as saying "I did not like being regarded as a freak because I spent time in front of a typewriter instead of a sink, and George did not like my not liking the things I was supposed to like." And in 1956 when defending her work said she did not go along "… with the popular notion that because a woman happens to be a teacher's wife, she must automatically give up seeing, hearing and thinking," writes Emily Toth, author of Inside Peyton Place: The Biography of Grace Metalious.

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