When Frank first meets Rita he sees her as a breath of fresh air in his life and he responds very well to her cheeky and irreverent approach to almost anything. He is so impressed that he tells her to get another tutor because he thinks he isn’t good enough for her. Later on Rita becomes more conventional in her views, and Frank thinks of himself as a sort of Frankenstein who has created a monster and he can no longer control.
The play follows just over a year in Rita's life and shows her gradual progress in an English Literature course. At first Rita knows she wants to do the course but not how to do well in it. It seems that she would rather do anything but talk about literature in the early lessons but she gradually gains confidence and skill in her speech and writing. A good example of her progress is her response to Macbeth. At first she does not understand how to write about it and produces a 'crap' essay. Frank explains that the essay is not bad in a personal view to the play but it does not fulfil the quality of the course she is undertaking. Rita accepts this and starts to write the essay again.
Her intention is to gain a college education and she largely succeeds in this although she loses her job and husband on the way.
Rita's education goes far beyond just reading and responding to books however. When she first comes to the university she is impressed and even intimidated by the intelligent people she sees around her. By the end of the play she is able to tell them when they are speaking nonsense and even join in their conversations as equal. Success in her literature course gives her greater confidence in the wider world.
Education for Rita involves a move out of her original social class and away from the values of her family and friends. This could be seen as a loss for her, but in moving beyond her working class background she gains in self-respect and self-confidence so that she is better able to handle the challenges of life. She loses her husband in trying to achieve this From what Rita says, they seem to get on well enough, but Denny doesn't understand her wish to be educated. He has a traditional view of the role of women and expects Rita to settle down and have children. When he discovers that Rita has secretly been taking the pill to stop herself becoming pregnant, he blames her behaviour on her desire to 'better' herself and burns her books.
Later in the play Rita meets Denny with his new partner who is pregnant. Although Rita loses Denny it seems that she had outgrown him anyway, whilst he quickly forms a relationship he is happier with. In losing her job Rita goes from the skilled work of hairdressing to the unskilled work of being a waitress. However she seems to make the best of this change and finds the new people she meets, such as Trisha, interesting and exciting.
When Rita gets back from summer school she has changed, she is more confident and she thinks she is educated. When Rita was at summer school she decided to take things more seriously so instead of telling a joke when the teacher asked a question she replied sensibly "Are you found of Ferlinghetti? It was right on the tip of my tongue to say only when served with Parmesan cheese but Frank I didn’t" and in a lecture Rita decided to start asking questions "After he'd finished he asked if any one had any questions, an I stood up". From this Rita thinks that she is educated, Frank also knows Rita is starting to become more educated and is kind of getting jealous, he tells Rita this by giving her one of his pieces of poetry. When Rita comes back she tells Frank that his poetry is great "this is brilliant, witty, profound…" but franks responds to this by saying that she has finished learning know but he is being sarcastic and he says that she has only started singing a different song not a new one "found a new song to sing have you, no you’ve found a different song to sing" So Rita has an argument with him and says "you can't bear that I'm educated now. Don't you like that the little girl has grown up".
Rita thinks she is becoming more educated but she is just starting to understand everything that she has been taught, Rita also wants to be more like Frank and she thinks her new friend is the female version of Frank, Rita also thinks that she is educated because she is just like Trish (the female version of Frank), she even starts to talk and act like Trish "What's wrong with your voice? Nothing I'm just talking properly… Trish says that no matter how difficult I may find it I must preserve" Because of this Rita thinks that she is educated. When Trish tries to commit suicide Rita realises that she is not educated, this is because Rita thought that Trish had everything but Trish knew she didn't, Rita also realises this now.
Rita no longer thinks Ruby fruit Jungle is the best book she has ever read – However she remains strong minded as ever Rita demonstrates this as the last thing she does (cutting franks hair in the office).
In the first act Rita confesses that she does not feel confident around middle-class people and she is unable to attend the dinner party that Frank invited her to for this reason. This changes, particularly after Rita attends summer school, but Frank worries that, in providing her a more middle-class view of life, he has taken away her working-class sense of community. To reassure him on this point Rita tells him about her visit to the pub after she had failed to go to his dinner party. She went there feeling a freak, neither working class nor middle class, (“half-caste) but when she joined in singing the song from the jukebox she saw her mother crying. Her mother was crying because they could have been singing a better song, and for Rita, singing a better song means getting a better education.
Rita considers herself to be a half cast because she is the only one who wants an education and the only one who wants to be able to have choice; she is not working class nor middle class.
The staging of the play, with just two actors, gives us chance to see the change in Rita from close up, without the distraction of other characters. It is easy to compare Rita of the first scene, promising Frank a haircut, with that of the last scene when she finally gets round to cutting his hair.
It seems that Rita gains more than she loses as a result of her education. She has some of the rough, and possibly more original, edges of her personality knocked off, but the things she loses are no longer of great value to her.
Scene 6 reduces Frank reduced to trying to contact Rita on the telephone. At the end of the play Frank is packing his books in preparation for his journey to Australia. He has been shaken out of his sleepy existence by his encounters with Rita, and is facing up to some of the unexamined problems in his own life.