Silence, silence, silence: An Exploration of Music and Sound in Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts

Abstract

Studies revolving around Woolf’s use of music have gained a large amount of traction in the last couple of decades, but still leave much ground to be worked on. Given the general novelty of the deep interdisciplinary study between literature and music, and particularly as it relates to Woolf’s Between the Acts, the present article will offer a fresh perspective on how circumstances of the time (particularly industrialization, and the two World Wars) affected not only the musical material present in her novel, but how it is represented and woven into the narrative. Through said analysis, new and interdisciplinary approaches are provided to understand how these two culturally informed phenomena work together towards the creation of a single coherent piece. Particularly, the text will include both the way sounds, silences, and music are incorporated in the structure of the text, as well as how some musical structures, belonging to both Modernism and Postmodernism techniques, are employed.