Daisy Cox
Educating Rita Coursework
How Does Willy Russell Dramatically Present Rita’s Change In Educating Rita?
Educating Rita was written by Willy Russell and first appeared on stage in 1980. It tells the story of a twenty six year old hairdresser from Liverpool, “Rita” White, who wants to break away from her stereotype, and to “discover” herself. She thinks that by going on an English literature course at the Open University, she will be able to achieve this. However, during her course at the university she unknowingly teaches her tutor as much about life as he teaches her about literature.
In this essay I will attempt to show the way in which Willy Russell uses several different dramatic devices to present the change in “Rita” dramatically.
Firstly, the playwright, Willy Russell, has partly based the character of Rita upon himself by giving her the kind of background that he had, the fact that it is semi-autobiographical makes it dramatic because it makes the storyline more realistic and relevant. We know that it is semi-autobiographical by examining his “personal essay” at the beginning of the play. Here he tells us that at his school “there were gangs with bike chains and broken bottles and truck spanners”. This description of school life is very similar to Rita’s, who describes her school life as “broken glass everywhere, knives an’ fights.” p17 act 1 scene 2. The fact that he has based this character on himself can be seen to be one of the reasons for him writing the play, to inform people of the difficulties faced by working class families regarding education. Also, he has, by doing this attempted to show how difficult it is to change from one lifestyle to another and how an “education” can’t always change your person.
However, there are also other reasons for him writing educating Rita, it can be seen that throughout the play, Willy Russell tries to get his own opinions about modern education across to the audience. There are several points that he gets across to the audience in the play, all relating to the difference between the classes and their attitudes to different parts of life. He tries to show the point that, at the time of the play being written, there were several fundamental differences between the views of the different classes. Firstly, he shows us that middle class people had a better chance at a good education because they not only had more money, but also as a class had an attitude to education that allowed for children to enjoy and excel in education. Whereas the working class attitude to education was that to be educated was to be snobbish or, as “Rita” describes it; “for the whimps” and that if she’d have become educated the she would have become “different from me mates, an’ that’s not allowed.” Showing clearly a main part of working class attitude to education and even a sense of peer pressure. Also, this lack of education in the working classes led to another difference between them, that to be working class was to limit your choices in terms of not only employment but also, as we see in the play, culture. Another main difference that Willy Russell tries to get across to the audience is that of the role of women and how it differs in working and middle classes. This is in terms of their education, career and also motherhood and marriage. This difference can clearly be seen in the play in the way that Denny and Frank treat “Rita”.
