Matthew Arnold is the famous Victorian poet and a critic. He is widely famous for his known poem “Dover Beach”. He is a critic and wrote a famous essay “The Function of Criticism” and “Cultural and Anarchy”. He has a great influence upon the Modernist poet including T.S Eliot. Arnold could be assume as a visionary as he was able to capture the upcoming catastrophe that was about to come forth with the transitional changes in the Victorian era. “Dover Beach” echoes the shadow of the approaching modernity.
The poem is written in a dramatic monologue and the tone of the poem is gloomy. As a Victorian poem, it shows the transitional changes in the society and echoes in the images. The imagery in the poem sets the mood of the poem and shows the sounds of the upcoming catastrophe to the society. The image of “groating roar” is a symbol of fierce or heavy weight of progression than the present scenario. He compares it to the waves upon which flings back return at the “high strand”. It suggest that the society is changing at a rapid state and a new changes are upcoming to the society.
The Victorian poem encapsulates the note of melancholic mood. The image of the Victorian temperament seems to “Begin,and cease” with the unending progressions. The sound of the waves and its movement seems to flow “with tremulous cadence slow” which escalates at the movement while bringing “The eternal note of sadness in”.
The most important element in the Victorian poem is the references to the classics. The reference to “Sophocles” highlights the transitional changes. “Sophocles” heard these changes in the “Aegean” and it inflected on his mind that brought the “turbid ebb and flow” followed by the “human misery”. It seems that Arnold is trying to suggest the impact of certain changes in the society and social instability. He states that the same amount of sound “Sophocles” heard in the past can be heard in the present “by this distant northern sea” implying the Victorian societal changes and approaching modernity.
The Victorian poem was heavily affected by the Charles Darwin’s theory. It led to the conflict between science and religion but it significantly led people to lose their faith in God. Arnold showcases the same amount of affect in the poem where he compares the “sea” to be the faith of people in God which “Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled” but many Victorians had already lost faith in God and he can only hear its “long withdrawing roar” and “Retreating” back from the faith.
The poem had tried to establish the Victorian notion on the theme of utilitarianism. It considers facts as established superiority than emotions and fancy which led to the materialistic mindset in the society. Arnold captures that the society lay like “land of dreams” which is different and new which has no more emotions and lack of humanity as there are “neither joy, nor love, nor light,/ Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain.” which reflects the engulfment towards materialism.
Lastly, the poem also critiques the war and the Victorian era witnesses a Crimean War and many soldiers died in the battlefield. He states in the monologue that they stand on a “darkling plain” with confusions of ‘struggle and plight” where “ignorant armies” fought over other by night which can be assume as the critique on Crimean war.
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