Finally, a return to 'Peyton Place'
Vilified during life, author is celebrated 50 years after book's publication
In the age of bobby socks and Eisenhower, upstanding citizens dared not sing the praises of Grace Metalious. The New Hampshire native, conventional wisdom held, had disgraced New England with the 1956 publication of her novel "Peyton Place" and its unbottled, unbuttoned portrait of life in a small town.
"She was called a slut, to her face," recalled Jeanne Gallant, a neighbor and friend of Metalious's in Gilmanton, N.H., where she lived and based the book. "People threw rocks on her property. Rotten tomatoes. People kept their children away from her children. You name it, they did it."
The wild success of the book was little antidote to the attacks, which, Gallant and others say, precipitated Metalious's descent into drink and her death of cirrhosis of the liver at age 39 in a Boston hospital.
So it is with some humility and delicacy that the City of Manchester, her hometown; the Manchester Historic Association; and the University of New Hampshire at Manchester this month are feting Metalious with an in-depth examination of her life and the book, which sold millions of copies, spawned a movie and television series, and is credited with helping undo the Victorian-styled ways of the 1950 s.
The celebration -- which includes lectures, readings of her work, and showings of the movie -- marks New Hampshire's first public embrace of its native daughter. It comes a year after the 50th anniversary of the book, a mistiming that city officials say was not deliberate. The State of New Hampshire, meanwhile, decided to let the anniversary pass unmarked, as did the Town of Gilmanton, where the only outward sign of her years there is the headstone on her grave in the Smith Meeting House Cemetery.
"There was some talk about marking the anniversary a year ago. But nothing was ever done. Some people felt they would just as soon let it go." said Donald Guarino, a Gilmanton selectman. "They said, 'Let it rest; there's no need to revisit it.' "
The novel shocked readers across the nation with its tightly woven, page-turner tale that included topics at once forbidden and familiar: abortion, sexual awakening, drinking, ethnic hatred, religious bigotry, and class division. The opening line gave hint of what was to come: "Indian summer is like a woman. Ripe, hotly passionate, but fickle..."
The book roared to the top of the
Some nations banned it, including Canada. Reviewers bashed it. Teenagers had to carry copies in brown paper bags and secretly flip to dog-eared pages containing the raciest passages. In Beverly Farms, Mass., a sign at the time in front of the library read: "This library does not carry 'Peyton Place.' If you want it, go to Salem."
"Peyton Place" was particularly hard-hitting in New England, where writers before had not explored the dark and Gothic in their backyards, leaving that to their brethren in the South with books like "Tobacco Road."
"People felt she had exposed a New England of dirty laundry, rather than the tourist New England," said Ardis Cameron, a professor of American and New England studies at the University of Southern Maine, who spearheaded the re publishing of the book in 1999.
Gilmanton residents chafed at what they claimed were character likenesses to real people in town, most notably, a local girl who confessed in 1947 to killing her father who had sexually abused her since she was 13. Metalious, in fact, used the sordid tale as the climax of the book and changed only one significant detail. At the insistence of her editors, she made her character, Selena Cross, the step daughter, rather than the daughter, of the abusive man.
Audiences, Metalious had been told, were not ready for incest on the written page. The tweak did little to soften the verisimilitude in residents' minds, and Gilmanton reacted with a vengeance.
"I heard children say to Cindy, 'I can't play with you because your mother wrote a dirty book,' " said Gallant of Metalious's third child. "It was Grace's dream to write a book that would be famous; it was her ultimate goal and she did do that, but she didn't realize the price would be so high."
Yet, to read "Peyton Place," it seems, Metalious might have been forewarned.
"She's behaving like an ostrich by staying here, as if nothing had happened," Metalious wrote of Selena Cross, after the girl is found not guilty of murdering her stepfather.
"Right or wrong, it happened, and it was only a matter of time before people would start to talk. All the fine friends who didn't want to see her hang for murder are hanging her themselves with their vicious talk."
Metalious was born in Manchester to working-class parents. At 17, she married a Greek -American classmate, George Metalious, who became a school teacher and principal; she had three children with him. But she resisted the mold of New England country wife.
She spent her days by the typewriter, dressed in jeans, flannel shirt, and pony tail and doing little housework. She called her house in Gilmanton "It'll do" and was well-known around town for her off-color language, bohemian friends, and penchant for town tales.
The success of her book when she was 33 came by storm. But her world began to crumble almost immediately. Her marriage ended. She wrote three more novels, but none neared her initial success. She burned through her money and her drinking became a toxic addiction. She is said to have told her British lover on her deathbed, "Be careful of what you want; you may get it."
George Metalious, who lives in Rye, N.H., remains reluctant to talk with the press, but, in a brief telephone interview, said he was pleased to see her hometown honoring her legacy.
"It's about time," he said. "She was vilified, but she was a good author and they didn't realize that till 50 years later."
He said Grace failed to receive credit for the role "Peyton Place" played in loosening the social strictures of the 1950 s.
"There's much more to the feminist movement now.... She was instrumental in that," he said.
Cameron, the American and New England studies professor, agreed, noting that "Peyton Place" predated "The Feminine Mystique" by Betty Friedan and wildly outsold it.
" 'Peyton Place' was read by a lot of ordinary people," she said. 'It helped people talk about issues that they really couldn't talk about before. They used the book as a way to confront issues, in justifying this kind of conversation."
One of those was Angele Levesque, 78, who graduated from Central High School in Manchester four years after Grace Metalious and read the book far from her mother's watching eyes.
"We were kept in the dark. Everything was hush-hush; we were supposed to be perfect in the public," she said. "Now it's all out in the open, and that's a good thing."
