Write a comparison of “Dover Beach” and “Dover Bitch.”

Life is a Bitch : Comparing Arnold 's Dover Beach to Hecht 's Dover Bitch

Much as it is a poem of vivid images translated into feelings of melancholia and 'ber sentimentality , Dover Beach has been touted as one of Matthew Arnold 's most admired poems . It was probably composed in the summer of 1851 and subsequently revised for the volume of New Poems in 1867 (Baum , 1958 ,

. 85 . The poem basks in the feelings of self-conflict , loneliness , alienation and inexplicable emotions set during the Victorian times . The poem consists of four sections

or stanzas : the setting (1-14 Sophocles , or the Greek parallel (15-20 the sea at Dover and the Sea of Faith , or the parallel extended (21-28 and the personal appeal (29-37 . At the start of the poem , readers could visualize a man standing at the edge of Dover Beach , feeling down and out . His tone is some what indifferent and philosophical about life 's iniquities . He then revealed that there is a woman with him , which he refers to as love . And , it then concludes with a pessimistic lamentation relative to the possibility of human happiness in a time bereft of faith

for the world , which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams

So various , so beautiful , so new

Hath really neither joy , nor love , nor light

Nor certitude , nor peace , nor help for pain

Anthony Hecht 's Dover Bitch (1968 ) claimed notoriety in parodying the 'ber romantic machinations of the male persona in Dover Beach . Hecht even acknowledged Arnold in his poem and begins with these lines

So there stood Matthew Arnold and this girl

With the cliffs of England crumbling away behind them

And he said to her , `Try to be true to me

And I 'll do the same for you , for things are bad

All over , etc

Noteworthy is that Hecht frankly assumes Arnold to be the speaker and his companion to be a woman , but he does not go on to suppose that Matthew Arnold was telling her not to worry and to leave it all to him he was fully aware that `things are bad /All over ' for everybody , not just for the two of them . There doesn 't seem to be any suggestion in Dover Bitch that Matthew is going to do `this girl 's ' worrying about the world as well as his own . Nor is there any such suggestion in Dover Beach the speaker 's point is that they are both , and indeed we are all in the same boat he is as helpless as his friend , whatever the friend 's sex . Gender seems here to be about as irrelevant as it can ever be Whatever the appearances to the contrary , the world Hath really neither joy , nor love , nor light , Nor certitude , nor peace , nor help for pain

Nearly everyone assumes that Dover Beach was written with Mrs . Arnold in mind . If one assumes further that the picture of Dover Beach in the moonlight - Come to...