Describe the progress of Rita's education - What effect does becoming educated have on Rita and those closest to her?

Authors Avatar
Describe the progress of Rita's education . What effect does becoming educated have on Rita and those closest to her?

Rita is a working class, uneducated woman. She wants to become educated to get away from the "working class culture" and to know "what wine to buy". During her education, at the Open University, Rita goes through three stages of development. Stage One commences when Rita first meets Frank and takes her up until she goes to summer school. The second stage occurs after Rita has returned from summer school where she became more confident and began to make friends. The third stage begins after Trish's (Rita's flat mate) suicide attempt. Rita's quest to become educated affects those closest to her, Frank (Rita's tutor) and Denny (Rita's husband), often in a negative way.

Rita is poorly educated, works as a hairdresser and lives on a council estate. Rita was not interested in education when she was at school because it was "borin'" and there were "ripped -up books, broken glass everywhere, knifes an' fights." All Rita's peers thought "... studyin' was just for wimps, wasn't it?" Yet despite this attitude Rita realized that she "... might have got it all wrong," hence her desire to join the Open University.

Rita's family expected her to leave school, get married, have a baby and be a housewife, so her expectations of herself were limited. Nevertheless, she is a thinker. We can see that she has quite a wide vocabulary because she uses words such as "erotic". This suggests to us that Rita has innate intelligence. Rita understands things but she just does not know how to express herself. An example of this when she defines "assonance" as "getting the rhyme wrong."

Rita has some difficulties because she is not confident in her own ability and has low self-esteem. Rita uses humour to try to cover this up. In the beginning she finds it difficult to accept criticism, believing it to be an attack on her person, so whenever Frank tries to advise her about her work, she changes the subject. Rita blames the books chosen for the course for her failure. She says "can't we do something I like?"

Rita is not experienced in writing essays and she does not know how to express her ideas. An example of this is when she writes "Do it on the radio." as an essay on Peer Gynt. This shows Rita's lack of education. Although Rita is not well educated she is very keen to learn. She looks up to Frank and wants to be like him.

"Rita: I wanna know

Frank: What do you want to know?

Rita: Everything"

Rita wants to become educated so she can get away from her "working class culture" I think this is why she is so eager to learn. She says "I don't see any (working class) culture. I just see everyone pissed or on the Valium, trying to get from one day to the next." Rita seems to find her life depressing. She says to Frank, " God what is it like to be free?" which makes us think that she assumes that just because someone is educated it means that they are free. Rita seems to think that she is not free.

As the first act develops Rita gradually becomes more committed to her course and stops talking as much. She chooses to go to her tutorials rather than "...to the pub with him and his mates," "him" being Denny. Rita widens her reading material to include some of the classics recommended by Frank. Her essays also become longer.
Join now!


A major turning point for Rita academically is when she goes to see "Macbeth" After the performance Rita seems much more confident and eager to work. We see this when she says "...it was fantastic, I'm gonna do an essay on it ." Rita then buys the text and can soon quote from it. This shows us that she is really enjoying her studies now. After seeing Macbeth Rita seems to be keen to visit the theatre and she starts going to art galleries in her spare time.

However, the improvements Rita has made have not come ...

This is a preview of the whole essay