Is ‘Dover Beach’ a poem about the
Victorian loss of faith? Substantiate with textual references.
Answer:
Mathew Arnold's 'Dover Beach'
is a beautiful lyric which describes the helpless uncertainty and doubt of the
Victorian period. There was a gradual decline in man's faith in God and
religion. The Victorian mind was dazzled by the achievements of science
and material progress. Faced with this choice between the world of faith
and the world of materialism, the Victorian found himself in a sad
Plight. In Dover Beach Mathew Arnold pictures this inability of man to
make the right choice. The poet uses the sea as a symbol to bring home
this idea.
The poem has a very beautiful
setting. It is a very peaceful quiet moonlit night at the Dover
Beach. The sea is calm and full. The Dover cliff stands out glimmering
and vast. The night air is sweet. The tides coming to the shore
fling down pebbles on the stand with a clattering sound. The poet watches
this ceaseless action of the waves. He listens to the rhythmic cadence of
the waves and he detects the eternal note of sadness in it.
The sad note is not only the poet's own personal feeling. It is the
universal note of sadness. The poet now takes us back through history to
the time of Sophocles. He too listened to the sad music of the waves; it
brought into his mind the miserable plight of humanity, its turbid ebb and
flow. Though the reference is to Sophocles, Arnold bridges the present
with the past.
From the real sea Arnold now goes to the metaphorical sea. 