Hear Rather the Shepherd Coughing . . .: Impressionable Listeners and the Possibility of New Scripts in Between the Acts

Abstract

This paper reads Virginia Woolfs Between the Acts in the context of a growing culture of listening and sound transmission. The centrality of aural experience in the novel, especially with the entrance of the gramophone, has led several critics to place Between the Acts within the culture of radio and technological sound reproduction. Yet instead of highlighting the active agency of listeners trained by radio listening, Woolfs listeners do not always exercise the critical capacity to resist hegemonic interpellations. Woolf engages in the anxieties of the radio era, testing not only the dangers but also the possibilities of the impressionable listener. While the act of listening makes the listener permeable to voices of ideological coercion, I argue that this susceptibility is not just a liability. Characters such as Lucy and Isa, as well as La Trobe are sensitive to the sound (of animals, of literary language, and of the audience) that are easily sidelined by broadcasts with explicit political messages. Woolf refuses to depict any of these characters as wholly critical, discerning listeners—Lucy, Isa, and La Trobe all risk being overwhelmed by what they hear, yet turn that risk into opportunities to crack the repetitious patterns that inculcate a British national identity in the sense of a we. Being an impressionable listener, or having such listeners beside them, Lucy, Isa, and La Trobe