The Dover Bitch Essay

What is love? That is a question people have been asking for centuries and everyone has a different answer. Love is a beginning, love is an end, it destroys, or possible conquers all are just a few answers. The range can also be from a hopeless romantic to a person who does not even believe that love exists. There are many factors that can influence an authors’ work, such as the time period and their overall view of the world. Dover Beach and The Dover Bitch are two views of the same night when a man expresses his love for a girl.

The poems were written only a century apart, but the views on love and life were very different. When Matthew Arnold wrote the Dover Beach English society was changing and there was change in how people thought and what knowledge was believed to be acceptable. During the 20th century when Hecht wrote The Dover Bitch the world as Arnold once knew it no longer existed (The Dover Bitch). Religion has a smaller role in society and it was the start of a women’s movement. Both of the time periods in which Dover Beach and Dover Bitch were written in played an important role in how the author views love.

Dover Beach was written by Matthew Arnold “around 1850, at a time when faith in God and religion seemed threatened by developments in scientific understanding and evolutionary theory” (Dover Beach).

One is his side of the story and the other is her side told through a friend. The love seen in Dover Beach is indestructible and powerful. From his prospecting in Dover Beach all you see is pretty girl being told that the world is a miserable place and that only love can some them from it. He is trying to be romantic and express his love. Love as in the idea of “true love” in Dover Bitch is shown as being a joke and nonexistent. From her prospective you see that she did not want to be there and did not care. She would rather be in France or have a glass of wine and a good