When Rita first enters the room she comes off as a person who is not afraid to speak her mind, that she is confident and honest, ‘I’m comin’ in aren’t I? It’s that stupid bleedin’ handle on the door. You wanna get it fixed!’ This confuses Frank and I think he is a bit shocked by her entrance. Another thing she is upfront about is being nosey. She looks around and notices a picture, ‘That’s a nice picture, isn’t it?’ ‘It’s very erotic’. This catches Frank off guard and I think he gets slightly embarrassed.
Once it is realised she is the new Open University student Rita starts to pry asking about Frank’s personal life. I think this has to do with insecurities. If she asks all of the questions none can be asked back to her. Rita wants to be like Frank because he is educated, middle class and has many choices. She can’t seem to realise how Frank can be so unhappy with everything he’s got. Rita wants to be like Frank and be able to fit in his academic world so she hopes that while he tutors her that she can perhaps help him to change slightly for the better.
In the opening of the play Frank shows great resentment toward being talked into taking an Open University student. He believes that he will get another average pretentious student and he doesn't know if he can handle it. Of course when Rita walks in she shows a different attitude to what Frank expected and they seem to get along well. However even though Rita is enjoying her Open University times her husband Denny is unhappy with it. He wants her to have a baby yet she lies to him and says that she has come off the contraceptive pill yet she has not. She has decided that before she has a child she wants to ‘discover meself first’.
After attending the Open University for a while Rita realises that her academia is distancing her from her family and roots yet she is not comfortable in intellectual surroundings and crowds. This makes her confused so when she has the opportunity to go down to pub with her family or go to Frank’s dinner party she has no idea what to choose. In the end after thinking about what decision to make she decides to go down to the pub as I think she feels it will be easier as everyone knows her and she is still considered working class. However as the play progresses Rita decides that she has to pursue her education because she is determined to become like Frank and fit into an intellectual group. As she reads more literature and gains more knowledge instead of going to the pub with her family and middle class people she decides to go to the theatre as this is seen as something that will make her more culturally rounded.
When things worsen at Rita’s home with her husband Denny instead of confronting him about their marital problems she starts to refer to Chekhov as if to say that she finds her literature and Open University studies more important than her husband. She decides to tell Frank that the only thing she values is going to her Open University once a week. This is a sign that she feels she is being more accepted by middle-class educated people and she is distancing herself from the working class.
When it comes to taking her first exam she says before hand that she is going to buy herself a dress if she passes it. This will mean to her that she has taken the first big step into escaping the middle-class culture and will be embracing an intellectual lifestyle, ‘sort of dress you’d only see on an educated woman’. When she feels at last that she can begin to fit in with the educated lifestyle she changes a lot of things about her current life. She starts to become obsessed with wearing the right clothes, sounding and speaking properly and buying the right wine. Also when she gets given an ultimatum by her husband Denny that says she has to come off the pill and give up studying or leave him, she decides to leave him. Many of his actions led her to make this decision, his lack of support meant she had to write essays in secret, when he finds out she lied about still taking the pill and in turn he burnt all of her literature books. Denny starts ‘wondering where the girl he married has gone to.’ Their views on life became completely different and too many conflicts occurred so she left him.
After she leaves him and lives temporarily with her mother she moves in with a lady called Trish. She tells Frank all about her and how she is ‘dead classy’, it is as if Rita looks up to her and realises what kind of a woman she really wants to be. She also realises that leaving Denny was the best decision she could have made seeing as she feels free and able to do what she wants. The next change to come for Rita is that she gives up her job at the hairdressers even though it is all she has really ever been good at. One thing she does though is not mention it to Frank, she begins to see her personal life as ‘irrelevant rubbish’, it is as if the only thing that she feels matters in her life is Frank and her education. She gets a new job in a bistro and continues to attend events such as the theatre and she also has more discussions about literature.
During the play Rita takes some time to go to a summer school and visit London. When she returns she makes a big deal of showing off her new clothes to Frank and telling him about all of the essays she had been writing. She feels more confident with herself and believes herself to be educated. We find out that when she first attended summer school she did not know anyone and she was scared yet when she was at the library pretending to be clever some one came up to her and said ‘are you fond of Ferlinghetti?’ Instead of making a usual Rita comment she thinks before she says anything and responds in a way that makes people perceive her as an intellectual, ‘I’m not too familiar with the American poets’. The she goes on to tell him how familiar she is with Chekhov and Frank does realise she is becoming more educated. He appears slightly jealous of this and when she reads his poetry and tells him ‘this is brilliant, witty, profound’ he responds sarcastically by saying that she has now finished learning. He says that she has not found a new song but just a different one. I think this is saying he believes that just because you become educated it doesn’t mean you will be any happier in life. Eventually Rita says to Frank ‘you can’t bear that I’m educated now. Don’t you like that the little girl has grown up’.
Throughout the play Rita and Frank have a very complex relationship. Overall they get along very well because Rita was not at all what Frank was expecting for an Open University student. He realises though as she becomes more knowledgeable and cultured that she is going to change and not be the same Rita that he first met. Rita wants to change because she thinks it will be for the better but Frank is not so sure. He thinks that when she becomes an intellectual she will lose her uniqueness and he says this to her when advising her on her examination. After the summer school Rita starts to control their relationship as she feels she is stronger. She tries to persuade Frank to have classes out on the lawn so she can socialise with other pupils of middle class, as she feels comfortable there now. She also gives Frank a warning about his drinking habits, which have worsened since his relationship problems and Julia actually leaving him.
Willy Russell uses an interesting style throughout this play to emphasise what is going on. In order to show us that Rita is becoming more and more intelligent through the play he not only gives her more complex language to use but also gives her less ‘Liverpudlian’ slang. Rita also begins to analyse day-to-day situations in greater detail and this shows she has a deeper thought on life.
After all of her hard work and studies of literature with Frank as her tutor she manages to pass her examination and she achieves what she wanted to, she now has more choice. When she does pass however she becomes what Frank was afraid of, pretentious. He compares himself to Mary Shelley’s story Frankenstein. Frank calls himself Frankenstein and says that Rita is his monster. She becomes less reliant on Frank and she no longer treats him as her advisor as she now has educated friends to socialise with. Frank feels he has lost the real Rita, once named Susan, just like Denny felt and it hurts him. When analysing poetry she does it blindly and forgets to put her soul into it like she used to. She also still idolises her roommate Trish. Rita even began to attempt to speak ‘properly’ just like Trish does even though Frank tells her to just be herself. When Trish attempts suicide Rita realises that her life was not perfect just because of her education. This is Rita’s wake up call and she realises that there is more to life than just education.
In the end she reverts back to using the name Susan, she stops trying to talk ‘properly’ and her old sense of humour comes back. She has however matured and is educated but it’s just as if it’s an improvement on the real Rita rather than a completely new one. With the pass of her examination Frank purchases a new dress for Rita and a good relationship between the two of them is re-established. The play ends with Rita saying that Frank ha given her so much so she says to him ‘come here, I’m gonna take ten years off you’. This may be perceived with a sexual undertone however all she offered to do was give him a haircut. It’s the personality of Rita shining through. She made many choices and in the end she did find what she wanted and was left with many opportunities and choices. I feel she found her inner self.
