Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and The Victorian Crisis of

Faith: - A Critical Reading of Dover Beach

Contributed by Johansen Quijano-Cruz
Sunday, 05 October 2008
Throughout time many men in many cultures hafe suffered of a crisis of faith.
Because of what they see around them they begin doubting that there may be a
kind and ever present god watching over the world. The victorian period was no
exception. The Victorian Era, because of Darwin's papers on evolution, was a period
when the religious crisis was in the core of every man's heart. Matthew Arnold, a
poet of the victorian era, is often considered the spokesperson for those who suffer
through a crisis of faith. It may be that even now, in the 21st century, some may
learn insights to life because of his poetry.

A Critical Reading of Dover Beach

In England, on 1859, during the Victorian period, Charles Darwin published a book
titled On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of
Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. This book introduced a scientific theory
stating that biological specimens, including humans, evolve over the course of
generations through a process of natural selection. This seminal scientific
manuscript was controversial because it contradicted the religious beliefs of the
time, which in themselves were a large influence on the then-current theories of
biology. In other words, Charles Darwin contradicted both the believes and
scientific knowledge of the Victorians. The publication of this work disconcerted
the Victorian populace, as it made them feel suddenly alone. It made the victorians
“experienced a great age of [religious] doubt, the first that called into question
institutional Christianity on such a large scale” (Landow-a).

It was during this time of doubt that the Victorians “invented the modern idea of
invention - the notion that one can create solutions to problems, that man can
create new means of bettering himself and his environment” (Landow-a). This era
is even considered by many as a second English Renaissance. Their inventiveness
can be seen not only in their applications to problem-solving, as Landow suggests,
but also in their art. According to Johnson, “Victorian literature was predominantly
a literature of ideas, and of ideas, furthermore, brought into direct relation with
the daily concerns of the reading public.” This shows that Victorians were not as
indifferent to cultural and aesthetic values as the modernists thought they were; on
the contrary, they were very self-conscious about their values. Victorians were so
self-conscious about their values, that when a work that scientifically challenged
them, they went into an era of mental ambivalence and confusion. The idea that
they had suddenly been abandoned by God launched them into an era of self-doubt;
a self-doubt that is reflected in the writings of the poets of the time.

Although “modern writers who were trying to free themselves from the massive
embrace of their Victorian predecessors often saw the Victorians chiefly as
repressed, over-confident, and thoroughly philistine” (Landow-b), the truth is that
whatever they might have been before Darwin published his manuscript, after
Darwin’s publication the Victorians were anything but over-confident philistines.
Some of the most renowned literary works of the Victorian period center largely
around self-doubt, specially religious doubt. Both In Memoriam (1850) and The
Idylls of the King (1885), by Alfred Lord Tennyson, considered by many as the most
important poet of the Victorian era, “center on religious doubt and its devastating
effects on self and society” (Landow-c), as did fictional prose from John Henry
Newman and Mary Augusta Ward, both prominent writers of the time.

Still, it is the poet Matthew Arnold who is “often described as the embodiment of
Victorian religious crisis” (Landow-c) Matthew Arnold offered a different
perspective on the conflict of loss of faith. While many authors and philosophers
dealt with the problem of natural selection versus creation, and how these two
ideas caused the internal turmoil of the Victorians, Arnold finds that the real
conflict was found in discovering “what to do after one has lost belief, rather than
in any uncertainty about belief itself” (Landow-c).It is possible that Arnold
struggled with his own internal conflict regarding religion and evolution until he
died, although if Landow’s observation is to be taken, a more accurate statement
would be that Arnold never found what to believe in after he lost his faith. .

Some insight regarding Arnold’s beliefs can be found in his major religious critical
work, Literature and Dogma (1873), where Arnold defines religion as “morality
touched with emotion”. In this short, yet eloquent, definition, Arnold manages to
mix the two governing factors that define religion – society and the individual.
Morality means to conform to certain rules of conduct. These rules are often
imposed on the individual by a state or other body of authority. Emotion, on the
other hand, can be considered as an “affective state of consciousness in which joy,
sorrow, fear, hate, or the like, is experienced, as distinguished from cognitive and
volitional states of consciousness” (Random House Unabridged Dictionary).
Emotion, unlike morality, is entirely individual. The mixture of these two elements
into a single definition, religion, is an ideal embodiment of what religious practice
is – an individual emotional experience adhering to the moral standards prescribed
by a specific community. It is no wonder, then, why Matthew Arnold said that the
true conflict came after one lost the faith – when faith is lost, so is the sense of
belonging that is attached to it, and in its place comes a deep sense of loneliness
and longing.

Arnold stated that "to pass from a Christianity relying on its miracles to a
Christianity relying on its natural truth is a great change.” This change was, in fact,
so great for Arnold, that he thought that “it can only be brought about by those
whose attachment to Christianity is such, that they cannot part with it, and yet
cannot but deal with it sincerely.” Arnold, it seems, is one that could not tolerate
this change. According to Landow, “Arnold once criticized an Anglican bishop who
pointed out mathematical inconsistencies in the Bible not on the grounds that he
was wrong, but that for a bishop to point these things out to the general public was
irresponsible” (Landow-a). It is possible that this unnamed bishop was merely
attempting to facilitate the transition from a miracle-based Christianity to a
morals-and-truth-based Christianity, just as it is likely that Arnold did not want to
make the change from a miracle-based faith to a moral-based faith, and thus the
critic of the bishop; however, Arnold was a man who rejected religious superstition
even though he retained a fascination for church rituals, which makes him seem
like a man who was in favor of the moral-based faith instead of the miracle-based
faith. This arbitrary change in behavior and rethoric demonstrates the internal
struggle that Arnold lived with – he did not know whether to believe in miracles,
represented by the theology of the time, or in nature, represented by Darwin’s
theories. Either way, it is certain that at least Arnold did believe in something.

In his essays The Study of Poetry, Arnold wrote that “without poetry, our science
will appear incomplete; and most of what now passes with us for religion and
philosophy will be replaced by poetry”. This means that science is forcefully tied to
poetry, and that without poetry there can be no science. Still, in Literature and
Dogma he wrote that

"The word 'God' is used in most cases as by no means a term of science or exact
knowledge, but a term of poetry and eloquence, a term thrown out, so to speak, as
a not fully grasped object of the speaker's consciousness — a literary term, in short;
and mankind mean different things by it as their consciousness differs”

If poetry is God, and science needs poetry to thrive, then, in Arnold’s mind, science
needs God to thrive. It is likely that, had Arnold settled in a single mindframe
regarding the religion versus science debate that was tearing the faith of
Victorians, he would have said something along the lines of: ‘Science is a wonderful
human creation designed to answer many questions regardung life, human nature,
and other aspects of the world in which we live in; however, it cannot answer all of
our questions. The answer to these unanswered questions is Poetry, also known as
God.” If Arnold believed in anything, he believed in Poetry, and it is through his
poetry that he expresses the innate sense of ambivalence and abandonment that
the victorians felt after Darwin published his work.

Banerjee suggests that the Victorians loved to be beside the seaside, and this is
something that can be seen in their literature. Matthew Arnold’s poem, Dover
Beach, a poem that was written as a way of expressing the void left by the theory
of evolution, is set inside a seaside shack. According to Ruth Pitman, this poem can
be seen as "a series of incomplete sonnets" (quoted in Touche).

According to Touche, “’Dover Beach’ is a melancholic poem that leads up to an

eventual climax with 'the light/ gleams and is gone'.” This melancholy is the same
sort of melancholy felt by the Victorian when they were faced with Darwin’s
observations. In a sense, the speaker in the poem represents the Victorians, now
faced with a faith crisis, and the listener standing by the door represents everyone
else.

Dover Beach opens with an image of a calm sea, a full tide, a fair moon, and the
French coastline in the distance, a coastline where the gleam of light is gone. At
the same time, we are treated to a view of the cliffs of England, glimmering and
vast. In this passage, the calm sea can be seen as the people and their faith, calm
on the surface, but full in reality of mixed feelings, as the poem discourses later on
when it talks about a tremulous cadence [of the sea] that brings eternal notes of
sadness. Throughout history, prominent English writers and scholars, like Samuel
Johnson, have stated that one Englishman is worth so-many Frenchmen due to the
age-old rivalry between France and England, a rivalry that dates back at least to
the Protestant Reformation of 1517 led by Martin Luther. This sentiment is apparent
in Arnold’s Dover Beach. Even though he is writing about the mental ambivalence of
the Victorians brought about by Darwin, he still has time to remind his readers that
England is superior to France. In lines 3, 4, and 5, he talks about the light of the
French coast and the English cliffs. In this passage, the French coastline’s gleam “is
gone”, but the English cliffs stand “glimmering and vast”, hinting that if there is
any hope left in the dark world, it is to be found in England.

On the following passage Arnold writes of Sophocles, and how he heard the eternal
note of sadness in the Aegean Sea, and that is what brought to his mind “the turbid
ebb and ebb and flow of human misery.”

Arnold continues by saying how “the sea of faith was once, too, at the full, and
round the earth’s shore.” The sea of faith was full before Darwin’s theory of
evolution. In his saying ‘round the earth’s shore’ he is, once again, hinting towards
the ethnocentric views that many Englishmen, and specially Victorians, had. Had
Arnold been referring to religion across the globe, he would have said ‘shores’
instead of ‘shore’. If this is so, then it would seem that ‘the world’ is, at least in
the mind of the Victorian Englishman, truly England. What was once an English sea
of faith, Arnold suggests, is now a “long withdrawing roar” full of melancholy that
has dawned upon the Victorians thanks to Darwin.

The speaker, Arnold representing Victorians, then addresses the listener “ah, love,
let us be true to one another”, and proceeds to tell this listener that the world, a
land of dreams, “hath neither joy, nor love, nor light, nor certitude, nor peace, nor
help for pain”. The main question when addressing this passage is who is the
listener? This ‘love’ could very well be a significant other or fellow Victorian who is
as discomforted at the thought of not being an elect nation, but it is more likely
that it is faith. This love that should remain true, or faithful, is a direct reference
to The Bible, “for in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts
for anything, but only faith activated and energized and expressed and working
through love" (Galatians 5:6). In this passage we see that love and faith are
intertwined, love energizes faith and vice-versa. This is not the only instance in the
bible where love and faith are mentioned. In 1Cor. 13:1-3, Paul states that "If I have
all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing”.
Furthermore, many theologians interpret various passages of the bible as saying
that love is the only measure of faith. Matthew Arnold was a man with an internal
religious crisis. He wanted to be true to his love, to his faith, as he wanted all
Victorians to do, and thus the speaker calls for faith. After all, to those who
believe, faith is the only thing that can help one survive where, as Arnold puts it,
“ignorant armies clash by night”.

In the end, the Victorians were a people who suffered through an internal crisis of
faith. This crisis was reflected in their literature, and the representative of their
religious crisis was Matthew Arnold, who writes Dover Beach as an outlet for his,
and the Victorian’s frustration, which came about thanks to Darwin’s observations.
It seems like no matter what feeling reigns over people, happiness, sadness, or
frustration, there will always be poetry to reflect these feelings; and should science
ever fail, poetry will still remain. Perhaps, as Arnold states, poetry truly is God.
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