To fully understand the play I feel you need to know and understand Rita before she became educated.
At the beginning Rita was a very funny young lady without meaning to be, she spoke as she found. When Rita first met Frank it is quite clear that they had many differences from each other the way they talked and acted and the different backgrounds they are from, Rita from uneducated working class and Frank is well educated. Rita starts off as a very enthusiastic Open University student. She feels trapped in her life and feels that she has not discovered herself yet and wants a chance to do so. Rita sees the university course and education as a way of achieving her personal goals. I agree with this to move on to anything new, to try and improve the quality of your life you need to be reasonably educated and knowledgeable and gain a variety of life skills. This then produces some form of self-belief and hopefully confidence which then can open more doors.
Willy Russell the author introduces us to Rita very well; his use of the language creates an amusing effect displaying that Rita and Frank see things in a completely different way. An example of this is when Frank is trying to describe to Rita what assonance is and Frank talks about Yeats the Famous Irish Poet. Most educated people would have knowledge of Yeats but Rita thinks it is the Brewery chain Yates showing that she is not educated.
“God what is it like to be free.”
I feel this quote above shows how badly Rita wants to change. Rita wants to be free and by this she means that by becoming educated she will have more opportunities in life and be able to do what she would like to do, have the freedom of choice. She also believes that Frank is free and wants to be like him desperately. She wants to be able to act, speak and understand all the things he does.
Rita feels trapped in her uneducated world. Her world where she is expected to go straight out to work, get married and then have children like her parents and their parents have. Rita wants to be set free from all of this, to choose to have a baby, to be able to move from the estate and that way of life.
Rita wants to change but not on the outside on the inside and she uses her work as a hairdresser and her customers to explain herself by saying “But these women you see, they come to the hairdresser’s ‘cos they wanna be changed. But if you change y’ have to do it from the inside, don’t y? Know like I am doin’.” Rita is saying that a new hair style or to be styled like a celebrity does not mean that you are that person and cannot make you a new person the only way that can be done is by changing from the inside. Which is exactly what she wants to do.
During the play Rita changes and develops. The major change took place at the beginning of her journey and she changed her name from Susan to Rita this was chosen after the author Rita May Brown. This was done hoping that it would impress Frank but unfortunately he had not heard of that particular author, again I feel this displays Rita’s naivety and uneducated background due to the fact that Rita May Brown is an author of sexually explicit books which Rita clearly enjoyed. But Rita’s intentions were there to, immediately change her name after an author unfortunately it turned out to be a wrong type of author and once she became educated she reverted back to her original name Susan.
Why was Rita chosen to be a hairdresser? I think it is because this play is an autobiographical influenced play. Willy Russell’s life is similar in very many ways. Coming from a working class background, struggling at school and leaving school without much of an education but ending up working as a ladies hairdresser. Willy also decided this was not enough and went on to Higher Education ending up at the end of his journey as a writer.
I think that Willy chose Rita to be a hairdresser because hairdressers have the ability to change people, though the changes they can make are only superficial. I also feel that is ironic that he made Rita a hairdresser as she also wanted to make changes but not superficial ones she wanted to change inside as well, within.
I really dislike Frank’s feelings of the changes that Rita made. Frank likened himself to the author of Frankenstein saying “I think that like you I shall change my name; from now on I shall insist upon being known as Mary, Mary Shelley – do you understand that allusion, Rita?” I think Frank has said this because he feels that he has turned her into a monster one who does not need him now and can converse with him on the same level and oppose him using very good reasoning. She is not a monster, but now an educated woman who is thoroughly enjoying the life she is now leading, far more than her old life. I think that Frank is feeling a little jealous and angry, he enjoyed Rita needing him he saw himself as something of a father figure and finding it hard to let her go, like a parent does in accepting that there son or daughter have grown up.
Rita has completely different feelings of her changes than those of Frank, she feels that she is no longer an outcast within the company of educated people, she no longer feels that she has to do the particular things that her family and friends expected her to do. She has achieved what she set out to do and become educated as she says, “I’ve got a room full of books. I know what clothes to wear, what wine to buy, what plays to see, what and books to read. I can do without you.” And though she is yet to sit her exams she has achieved it and she is standing there in front of Frank and telling him so with such confidence. She knows that she has given herself many more choices. After Franks outburst she makes her feelings, and that she understands his comments, clear to him by saying to him, “I’ll tell you what you can’t bear, Mr Self-Pitying Piss Artist; what you can’t bear is that I am educated now. What’s up Frank don’t y’ like me now that the little girl’s grown up.”
I feel that the audiences really have taken to Rita and this is due to the way Willy Russell has written the play. At the beginning of the play his good use of comic language has made us like Rita because he has made her very funny and very likeable. During the play and her journey we have seen her go through many emotions and the audience has followed her through these times and Willy Russell has used these emotions to manipulate the audience into feeling for her. Going through this journey with Rita at the end we then see the old Rita again but educated when she sits Frank down, gets out her scissors and says to Frank “I’m gonna take ten years off you.” I feel this last line brings the audience back if they had any doubt about liking the new Rita. Displaying the amusing side of her again and showing that she has not forgotten who she was.
I really like Rita and when finishing it I felt very pleased and happy for her. I definitely think that the new Rita is far better, though I did like the old one. The new Rita has a combination of education and yet still retains a sense of reality and humour. I firmly believe that she has found a better song to sing giving her more confidence, happiness and many more choices she has found her and feels free and able to make a life for herself. She will choose her own destiny.