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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