If you don't mind sacraficing compatability to do this than you can make your method 'lvalue'able. This only works with perl 5.6 and higher.
sub option : lvalue { shift->{options}->{shift()} }

Then you can get values as you normaly would and set values with
$object->option('new') = 'bar';

But if you do this please include use 5.6.0; at the top of your code.