P eyton Place has a single protagonist in the character of Allison MacKenzie, but she is developed against a background of various other characters who provide through their individual stories the social fabric of Peyton Place.
Allison is the daughter of Constance and a lover out of her past and is therefore illegitimate, although she does not know it for most of the novel.
Allison has ambitions, as her mother once had, of escaping the small town and going to New York to seek fame and fortune. She wants to be a writer and hopes to use her vocation as a means of supporting herself so that, unlike her mother, she can possess an economic independence which will provide her with social and personal freedom. Although her mother fears that she will become trapped.....
