“Listening to the zoom of a hornet”: Virginia Woolf’s feminist reflections on the sounds of military weapons and war violence

During the First World War, British civilians endured a myriad of German air raids, leading to an increased susceptibility to the sound of bombings. Meanwhile, some soldiers on the battlefield developed shell shock due to prolonged exposure to bomb explosions. Even after the war, they found themselves haunted by the lingering shadows of their traumatic experience. They involuntarily associated certain street sounds with the sounds of war weapons, triggering traumatic delayed reactions and vivid recollections of wartime violence. However, the British government at that time viewed such…