Where in New England is Peyton Place?

Peyton Place brings into sharp focus one of the longest running tropes in the literature of New England: the region's “Puritan” heritage—once imagined as high-minded and moral, but later as repressive and hypocritical. As Ardis Cameron has put it, "Metalious unbuttoned New England.” This discussion will explore how Peyton Place works in the classroom to focus students' attention on shifting narrative constructions of New England and of American regionalism generally.