Hecht's "The Dover Bitch" interpenetrates the poetic intent of Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach." Arnold makes a project of articulating a crisis of faith, though his immediate object of address is his lover; Hecht turns that project on its head, articulating a highly personal experience of the world, with both world and lover incidental to the poet's response. In other words, Arnold takes the universe as a manifest subject, and Hecht parodies that by focusing on the poor dear who had to hear Arnold out.
Hecht's parody is not, however, a lampoon of Arnold's poem. Hecht's poem is rather in the nature of an hommage, inasmuch as the poet is, ultimately, revealed to be just as confused and tentative about his connection with the universe as Arnold is. Arnold's Victorian questioning of the rightness of the world in "Dover Beach" becomes Hecht's contemporary questioning of whether deep meaning is accessible. Arnold's somewhat incidental lover--compared to the paramount status of the inscrutability of the cosmos--dominates more than half of Hecht's poem. For Hecht, who declares he knew her, "that girl," who stands for most people, was, way down deep, rather superficial, or at any rate living in the moment, not for the ages.
Hecht explains: Yes, she had read Sophocles, but for a weekend at the beach, she had anticipated lovemaking, not a slightly impersonal plea, however heartfelt, for fidelity in love. Hecht characterizes the girl as nice enough but far too ordinary for Arnold's "mournful cosmic" (Hecht) consciousness of "confused alarms of struggle and flight" (Arnold)--as if her plans for a quick weekend on the beach went awry. Hecht is superficial enough to gift her, casually, with perfume, but from his acknowledgment of her superficiality one infers longing, à la Arnold, for preoccupation with matters of more moment.
Arnold, Matthew. "Dover Beach." Dover Beach and Other Poems. New York: Courier
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