While the audience expects Eliza to marry Higgins, and perhaps Rita to go with Frank to Australia, neither does.
Even though both Rita and Eliza are strong characters before they begin their education, and keep their strength. Higgins can do without Eliza; it is questionable whether Frank will survive. It is also interesting to notice that Frank is looking for love from Rita at the end, while in ‘Pygmalion’ it is only Eliza who wants affection.
Higgins never asks for anything from Eliza; Frank is asking for more and more from Rita as the play develops. Considering this as a genuine issue would suggest that Frank is a slight insecure whereas Higgins tends to be more supercilious and thinks that he has no use for anyone else and he can cope perfectly fine on his own – ‘I can do without anybody. I have my own soul: my own spark of divine fire.’
As well as looking at how the characters are similar and dissimilar to one another, it is necessary to look also at the themes and morals entwined within the plots of both plays.
For the main part both plays are largely concerned with the nature of class. Each character has their own unique opinion of class:
Higgins has a fairly shallow understanding of class, because he refuses to see how it applies to himself. He claims to be classless and to treat everyone as equals. He also has no doubt about the value of being middle class. While Rita shares these feelings initially, Russell suggests finally that she has found a different song to sing, not a better song.
Frank also bullies Rita: she must conform to middle class expectations of essays, ways of thinking and speaking.
When Frank wants to hurt her, it is the charge of conformity that he throws at her. ‘I can’t bear to look at you, my dear,’ he says, comparing her to Frankenstein’s monster. But just as conformity had its rewards in working class life, so it does in the middle class society of the university. Gradually, as her hair, her clothes, her mindset change, Rita finds she can talk to the other students thus becoming of their class.
Trish is part of a thread of scenes suggesting that literature, the arts, culture, the things of the mind, are not in themselves the answers to anything. In Rita’s terms, Trish hasn’t found herself. She has no career, but seems to be a glorified waitress. There is no significant other in her life. More dangerously, she is always comparing the life she leads with the literature and art she values, and finding real life harder to imagine.
It may not seem palpable but Frank’s poetry is a rather strong issue in ‘Educating Rita’ which contains several interesting ideas :-
- Frank tells Rita that he and his wife divorced over his failure to continue writing poetry. This is a symbol of Frank’s failure to keep exploring his own self. Worse, his disillusionment with his own accomplishment to spread to the whole of literature and to begin to corrupt his professional life as a teacher.
- Frank knows he has lost Rita. Whatever she says about his poems will be wrong. But having given her the education she craves, he is now trying to assert that it is worthless: she can’t tell the difference between his poems and real poetry. He accuses her of parroting what she has been taught like Eliza at Mrs Higgins’ ‘at home’ meeting.
Dramatic device is used numerous times throughout the play. Many of the features connected or linked to Frank disclose deep along with personal ideas and feelings which reveal to us the true aura of Frank’s existence. To begin with Frank’s room in itself contains many examples of symbolism. The idea of the window being jammed shut and the door knob broken gives the impression that Frank is locked into his room of his own accord (especially as he hasn’t made an effort to fix the problems.) This is also contradictory since his room is located within the ‘Open’ University. The issue of Franks drinking problem is also a thought to be aware of. Since it is against the rules, Frank is forced to hide his drink, in this case it would be behind the book of shelves. If you imagine Frank to be the alcohol and the wall of books, education then we can see that he is trapped behind the wall of knowledge and so stuck in a world of education until he finds a way out, this being predominantly Rita.
Before stating that she has never given him anything, Rita cuts Frank’s hair. This is symbolic of the relationship between Delilah and Sampson. According to Greek mythology, when Delilah cuts Sampson’s hair all of his strength contained within his hair is drained from him and he becomes weak. Eliza asserts her independence, but she can only do so by leaving superman Higgins and going to half-man Freddy. Rita, on the other hand, playing Delilah to Frank takes his strength away rather than hers being engaged. In leaving him will she take away the vigour that he needs but she will not give him. In doing this she is denying him the life that he could be capable of if he tried.
Higgins gives Eliza his terms: she says: ‘And you may throw me out tomorrow, if I don’t do everything you want me to,’
‘Yes; and you may walk out tomorrow if I don’t do everything you want me to. Though Higgins adds that he will adopt her and settle some money on her, this is still a most unequal bargain. Higgins owns the house; Higgins has private money; Higgins has family; Higgins has a profession. Eliza may appear to be in a favourable position, but really in 1914, she has only one career ahead of her - marriage or doing what Higgins wants without marriage (and it is going to include fetching slippers). There is little that Shaw can do about this, as it is the social fact of his time.
However, Russell in 1980, when women not only have the vote, but all professions are open to them, and they have feminism to support them, can repeat Shaw’s ending but make it more convincing and therefore stronger.
When Rita returns to tell Frank he is a good teacher, she accepts the Frankenstein monster charge he has thrown at her. Intelligently, she admits she has taken in all middle class values and ideas too fast and therefore uncritically. She is a parrot. But she will grown through this stage.
What Frank has given her is choice, that is control over her own life. We have seen Rita tempted to allow others to control her, like Denny. We have seen her grow beyond Frank’s control, choosing not to come to his tutorials, because he cannot offer her anything. Like Higgins she is alone at the end of the film, but her sense of herself is more inclusive than his. She is not a bus, bouncing over people, but a very strong, yet caring individual. Like Eliza she has become a woman, but if Frank had a hand in her making, now she is her own possession and will continue to be her own creator.
