Kelsey Morgan
10 Feb. 2014
Eng 495 ESM M/W 12:30
Prof. Wexler
“Dover Beach”
In a time of many advances spanning
over various schools of thought; the people of the Victorian Age were known to
be a people constantly adjusting whom they were at their essence to keep up
with all the new ideas being presented. During this Age with all the advances,
the atrocities of war, and new philosophies, the foundation that religion once
brought them was breaking down leaving the people with a great amount of doubt
and uncertainty. “People were sure only of their differences from previous
generations, certain only that traditional ways of life were fast being
transformed into something perilously unstable and astonishingly new” (“The
Victorian Age”, 1099). Great thinkers such as Darwin and Marx were quickly and
efficiently negating Biblical accounts preventing even God and their faith to
give people comfort. Matthew Arnold used his successful status to address this
dismal attitude. In “Dover Beach”, the loss of self due to the new lack of
religion fills its readers’ hearts and minds leaving one to sit and work out
the ideas it raises. Arnold’s use of romantic imagery conveys the somber truth
that the people of the Victorian Age were in need of a new foundation for their
life, beliefs, and sense of self but were unsure of where to find it.
“Dover Beach” is very representative of the
loss of self felt among that day both in its diction as well as it poetic
style. This poem is a dramatic monologue. This is a perfect style for this
poem. It conveys a sense of loneliness. One can just imagine him talking to his
wife but he is looking out the window not at her, almost as if talking to
himself more so than her. Then, the last stanza he falls out of his thoughtful
daze and presents an idea of what is left to do. In addition, this poem is a
free verse poem following no predetermined meter. This is effective because
Arnold uses a style that breaks through the boundaries of a traditional
versification (Cummings Study Guides). He goes against the traditional verse,
showing yet another way the times are changing, however, he looks for a balance
between religion and other ideologies as is seen in his rhetoric. He does not
use traditional verse, however, he still relies on traditional poetic devices
to create a clear meter. He uses slight alliteration, parallel structure, and
rhyming words (Cumming Study Guide). Examples of alliteration include: Gleam and gone, fair and French, and coast and cliffs. One
can see parallel structure throughout: “The tide is full, the moon lies fair”
(line 2), “Retreating, to the breath” (line 26), “So various, so beautiful, so
new” (line 32), and “neither joy, nor love, nor light” (line 33). He uses these
traditional devices hoping that somehow he can justify these new ideas
represented as free verse in his poem. Although he continues this syntax
throughout the entire poem, the diction shows he concludes that there is no
justification.
Arnold uses juxtaposition very
efficiently in this poem. One example of juxtaposition is his mentioning of
past and present with light and dark. He mentions the past when he says in line
21-22: “The Sea of Faith/ Was once, too, at the full”. The narrator also looks
off in the distant and sees the lights of France and then says it “is gone”
(line 4). All of these lines convey that he past was full of light. It was a
time when one could still have complete faith in religion without the doubt
that the Victorian age brought about through Darwinism, the Industrial
revolution, and Imperialism (VictorianWeb). Then he conveys that the present
time is filled with darkness, which represents confusion, doubt, and sadness.
In lines 24-28 he depicts the melancholy of the night-wind and nakedness of the
world. This perfectly reveals the state of loss the Victorian people were in.
Because they had been stripped of their religious foundation and had not yet
found anything to replace it, they were miserable, naked, and lonely.
In the two stanzas, Arnold
introduces the idea of the poem using his theory of “disinterestedness”. In his
piece “The Function of Criticism at the Present Time”, Arnold explains that one
must remove themselves from their personal feelings and look at situations
completely objectively in order to see the Truth of it (Arnold, 1689). Reading
“Dover Beach” with this in mind, it can be observed that Arnold successfully conveys
the melancholy state to his audience without having them be once removed from
the original feeling. It allows for more strength in his poem. He does this in
various ways. First, he appeals to the visible and audible senses. The narrator
sees the nature, and then the poem
progresses to hearing it as seen at the beginning of line 9: “Listen!” “Often
Arnold penetrates through appearance to reality by exchanging the visual sense,
which is suitable only for apprehending the surface of the world, for the more
profound auditory” (Stitleman, Alice N., 140). This process is seamless. He
opens then scene then he draws it in to produce personal feelings, however, he
does this in a neutral way. He produces personal emotion by providing an
auditory experience of a monotonous cadence quite directly: “Begin, and cease,
and then again begin/ With tremulous cadence slow, and bring/ The eternal note
of sadness in. (lines 12-14)”
The second stanza is Arnold’s
further use of disinterestedness by using history-something neutral- to convey
a personal feeling. When mentioning Sophocles on the Aegean, “Arnold alludes
here to a passage in the ancient Greek play Antigone, by Sophocles, in
which Sophocles says the gods can visit ruin on people from one generation to
the next” (Cumming Study Guides). This relates to the theme of “Dover Beach”
because whether or not gods are to blame, one cannot deny the ruin of humanity
at their deepest level that occurs during the Victorian Age. Lines 16-18 says:
“it brought/ Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow/ Of human misery”. The
imagery that is packed into these few suggests that the sea of human hearts is
declining because of the clouded-or confusing- times causing human misery. It
happened back in Greek times and is happening again. This occurrence is
inevitable because with time comes new advances and with new advances comes
resetting of beliefs, which is a very traumatic process.
The third stanza drives home the
point Arnold makes during the whole poem. Religion once filled the world, but
because of the advances made, “it’s melancholy, long, withdrawing roar (line
25)” is retreating. This personification suggests that it can no longer fill
the space in human hearts that provided a sense of self for people. The seas in
people’s hearts are drying up with no hope of being filled again. The Sea of
Faith is compared in a metaphor to clothes in line 23. The narrator is saying
that Faith used to clothe us. It protected us, gave us warmth and comfort, kept
us safe from the dangers of the world. However, later in same stanza, he uses
the word “naked”. This comparison shows just like the sea is drying up, the
clothes are being taken off. Doing this not only shows loss and decline, but
using “naked” gives its readers the feeling of depression and hopelessness like
a poor man. Arnold uses this convention to surprise the readers by revealing
the nakedness of our hearts but chose not to end with a clothed heart. The
world remains in its helpless, naked state. This helps point out Arnold’s sad
truth.
The fourth and final stanza
proposes all that the narrator can suggest as a semi-solution to the lack of
foundation. It is a semi-solution because it does not fix the problem it is
merely a coping strategy. The first line of the last stanza is very ambiguous.
“Ah, love, let us be true” (line 29). The use of ambiguity allows, once again, for
personal connection as one can determine for oneself how they want to read it. “Love”
is usually interpreted two ways: the first being his wife- a lover, and the
second being love itself. If interpreted as love itself, this stanza can be
viewed as a universal plead with love and all humanity. This interpretation
does follow the ideals of his “disinterestedness” he talks about in the
Function of Criticism at The Present Time, however, it can be debated that he
is talking to his wife. If “love” were referring to his wife, then this would
be a plea for personal connection. Because of the loneliness felt at the
beginning of the poem, making a cry for personal connection would be extremely
fitting. There is also another argument that can be made about “let us be true
to one another”. He longs for him and his wife to be true to each other, to be
faithful, and honest with their love because the world is no longer honest with
him. The narrator goes on to explain the way the world has deceived him. He
says the world “seems to lie before
us like a land of dreams/ So various,
so beautiful, so new,” (lines 30-32) but it is not a happy place. His use of
similes here is used to solidify what is literally being said in his poem. He
is such a genius at discussing a particular idea in his poetry and also showing
it in his diction choice. “As Arnold saw it at that moment, the loss of
Christian doctrines about God and the soul drained away all the normal meaning
from life, leaving us desperately trying to make sense of a dead, empty world
by pulling on our bootstraps” (Mary Midgley, 209). Although the world looked
promising, it was not. He goes on to explain what the world is actually
lacking, despite what it may look like. Lines 33-34 says: “Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light/
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain”. All of these attributes are
characteristics like the Fruit of the Spirit mentioned in the Bible (John
McArthur Study Bibe, Galatians 5:22). These two different lists of characteristics
show perfectly the deceit that occurs during the Victorian time period. The
first describes what was going on during that time. All of the advances were so
beautiful, various, and new. It suggested hope and happiness. However, that was
not the case. What was supposed to improve life broke down what kept life
together- faith and with it fell all the positive attributes that were upheld
in Christianity. The world was no longer what it used to be. And what it had
become was a “darkling plain” (line 35) full of confusion. Without faith and
religion as a foundation, people were at a complete loss. The last two lines
describe an example of what life for him and people of his time is like after
Christianity can no longer suffice. Some have suggested that: “these lines refer to a passage in
Thucydides, The Battle of Epipolae, where — in a night encounter — the two
sides could not distinguish friend from foe” (Victorian Web). Without God, the
world is full of chaos unable to decipher friend from foe, fact from fiction,
and truth from lies. The last stanza holds in it so much depression, so much
hopelessness that one almost has nothing left to conclude except to die- which
would be what life without God leads to- or to love the people around them and
be involved in their life making the most of it.
Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach” has packed in
it so much symbolism about Victorian life and what it truly has to offer if God
is no longer in it, especially if there is nothing even to replace God. The
truth about the loss of life as people knew it and all it entailed is
represented and felt in this poem. It has such ability to relay the destitution
despite such surge in wealth and knowledge. “Dover Beach” really presents what
Arnold holds in highest regard- a foundation for life, which is something all
people hope to find. However, when a foundation is unseen, sometimes all that
is left to do is find someone to share this loss with and love each other.
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