The pioneer of the great Victorian renaissance

Introduction
Dover Beach was written by Mathew Arnold in 1851 which falls under the period
of early-Victorian era and beginning of mid Victorian era. Dover Beach is basically
a lyric poem that states how people have completely loosed faith in god due to
the advent of Darwinism in mid Victorian age. Also Victorian era was perquisite of
industrial revolution which leads to intellectualism and logical reasoning and now
due to this people were started to question even religious believe and thoughts,
and now this poem briefs about the problems that the people were facing in this
Victorian age.

About Mathew Arnold

(Study of the poet)
Poetic Styles and the Thought Process
The work that gives Arnold his high space in the history of literature and the
history of ideas was all accomplished in the time he could spare from his official
duties. The early poem of his were quite dramatic in nature , which leads to the
foreshadowing of his later criticism in the insistence upon the classical virtues of
unity, impersonality, universality, and architectonic power and upon the value of
various classical masterpieces like “an age of spiritual discomfort”. The another
style that makes Arnold unique is, that his verse will stand the test of his own
criteria , far from being classically poised impersonal, serene, and grand , it is
often intimate, personal, regret, sentimental pessimism, and nostalgia. As a public
and social character and a prose writer, Arnold was sunny, debonair and
sanguine; but beneath ran the current of his buried life, and much of his poetry of
echo of his own deeper perspective of his probable shady life. It is said that when
the poet in the Arnold died, the critic inside him was born and it is evident that
from this point of time he turned almost entirely to prose. Some of the leading
ideas and phrases were early put into currency in essays, in criticism, culture and
anarchy.

A Brief View and the Insight Of The Victorian Era

Loss of faith and certainty:

Written during the Victorian era, Mathew Arnold’s “Dover Beach” admits to and
laments the loss of religious faith that came with advances in various fields at the
time revolutionary biology, geology, archaeology and textual analysis of bible. The
poem senses the turn of historical epoch and finds the change echoed in the
transitional figure of the beach-the blurry border between land and sea. The
poem thus asks the reader to consider what is lost in humankind’s movement
away from the certainties of the Christian faith. For the speaker loss of faith is loss
equals to loss of certainty. The Dover Beach itself seems to embody this loss, both
in its sight and its sounds. At the first, the poem offers no clues that its main
subject is the loss of faith. Instead, it begins by describing its atmosphere in which
the speaker stands. The descriptions of the sea and the sound of the pebbles on
the beach are lyrically beautiful at first, but they mask the eternal note of sadness
which is revealed at the end of the stanza. This stanza intrusion of sadness hints
at the speaker’s sense of loss, which finds fuller expression later in the poem
through the symbol of the sea, the poem suggests two key ideas: firstly that major
shifts in the fabric of society that occur subtly – the beach’s slow, repetitive
moments show the gradual but inevitable loss of faith that the speaker senses in
this historical moment.

Nature and Alienation:

Linked to the idea of a loss of faith is a shift in a way people relate to the natural
environment. Written shortly after the era of romantic poets, who praised nature
as an antidote to overly rational thinking, Dover Beach raised questions about
humankind’s relationship with nature. Instead of finding happiness or the sublime
in the natural environment, the speaker finds a deep sense of sorrow (even while
admitting to the beach’s beauty). The cold difference and the vast power of the
natural world would make the speaker feels small and insignificant. The poem is
therefore an attempt to capture the complexity of the human experience as just
one part of the natural world, rather than its center. Centre to the poem is an
implicit admission that mankind is merely one part of large system-the natural
world. The natural scene prompts the speaker to think about timescales that
make their own life less significant. The speaker looks out on a scene that is, on
one hand is beautiful but on the other hand, a powerful remainder to nature’s
indifference to humankind.

Love (The warmth and epitome of life):

With the retreat of religion causing a crisis of spiritual of faith, the speaker turns
to love as an answer for the loss of god. Perhaps, the poem suggests that, love
between the people can compensate for the loss f the connection between god
and mankind. But the poem only argues that love has the possibility of creating
the certainty that religion ones did- it doesn’t make the case that this is
inevitable. It is generally agreed that Arnold wrote “Dover beach” while on his
“honeymoon”, it’s probably certain that the speaker is certainly not alone in the
poem. The speaker’s, interaction with an offstage lover demonstrate the possible
restoration of a different kind of faith-in love rather than in god. The speaker’s
attempt to share the experience is an argument for intimacy and honesty
between people, “Togetherness”, the poem argues, can help to overcome any
situation, lastly the poem ends with a note that love may be the only answer to
the problems identified by the speaker; loneliness and loss of faith.

Advent of Industrialization and its, Catastrophic effect:

Mathew Arnold was clearly opposed to modern industrialization; he believed that
it created a laborious work ethic, and that people ended up wasting their lives
away on mundane tasks. He referred to such a life as a ‘’prison”. Many of his
poems incorporate this viewpoint. For example, in “The Scholar Gipsy”, he lauds
the scholar gipsy foe breaking from this type of lifestyle. In “A Summer Night”, he
condemns how this modern world breaks everyone into imprisoned laborers or
those who are willing to be considered “madmen” by breaking away. He often
poses nature as a contrast to this industrialized life. Overall, this desire to
transcend the limitations of the modern world constitutes Arnold’s most common
theme. Also Arnold shows that with advent of industrialization comes with the
advent of extreme classism where these powerful heads of the society, exploits
the other classes of people:- child labour and women exploitation became the
living example of it , also this industrialists have immense political power to
influence the government .

Conclusion
Dover Beach is Mathew Arnold’s , best known poem written in 1851 , it was
inspired by two visits he and his new wife Frances made to the South England
where the white cliffs of Dove stand, just twenty two miles away from the coast
of France. For all the opportunity of this particular work, Arnold himself was a sort
of reluctant poet. He made his living as a cultural critic and wrote influential
books such as the curiously titled “Culture and Anarchy”, published in 1869. He
could not stop the muse from surfacing. It has to be remembered that he was
writing at a time when religion was under tremendous from the scientific and
evolutionary theory. At that time technology was slowly starting to take grip on
life. Mathew Arnold thought that poetry would replace conventional religion and
became the new spiritual force in society. At last Dover Beach broke with the old
forms poetically speaking, it’s an open ended poem that has irregular rhyme and
rhythm and has no classical template.