Educating Rita

“finding herself”. Rita strives for the identity of an educated woman, a woman who can have choices and to have different paths in her life. So she rejects her working class origin and changes her name.                                        University lecturer Frank needs to earn some extra money, so he agrees to tutor an Open University student. His student is Rita a brash, earthy hairdresser with a recently discovered passion for higher education, much to the dismay of her husband Denny. In her attempts to appreciate literature, Rita challenges the attitudes of a traditional university, teaching Frank to question his own understanding of his work and himself. The play also explores the relationship between student and tutor. Before Rita arrives at the university, Frank a frustrated, board, appalling teacher is losing all enthusiasm to his teaching duties and fills his bookshelves in his office to hide the whiskey bottles.                                                   "Why didn't you walk in here twenty years ago?" Frank says that he understands why Rita has only come now to university, but he is never quite convinced that he is doing the right thing in turning Rita into the kind of person who is acceptable to and approved by the academic world. Frank feels that too much of Rita’s original charming personality will be destroyed in the process. As Rita desires exactly what Frank doesn’t value anymore: the speech and culture of the upper class and most of all the escape from the working class life as she progress and is partly educated, where as Frank appreciates all of what Rita is turning away from. Throughout the play Rita becomes more and more absorbed in the joys of culture and literature. She visit a theatre to see Shakespeare’s Macbeth and really enjoys it; she enjoys it so much that she gives up her job as a hairdresser. When Rita’s flatmate Trish attempts to commit suicide, Rita realises that literature will not hold all the answers, but continues to stay on as Frank’s student and succeeds in her exams. Rita goes though a lot of changes during her time with Frank; although they are different they share a lot of mutual understanding and similarities. There is a big visible and dramatic change when Rita arrives back from summer school. When we first meet Rita she goes straight into conversation about a door handle that needs to be fixed. (Considering it is supposed to be an interview). This shows Rita hasn’t had much experience of the upper class social standards before and also by just stating that the painting on Frank office wall is “very erotic”.                                         This shows that she doesn’t think about what she says.                                         However after Rita attends summer school, she is partly educated and feels and sees herself as “half-caste”, and feels she does not know where she belongs anymore. Rita is uncomfortable with her family and friends and can’t relate to them anymore, yet she feels not educated enough to fit in with the middle class. This seems to occur when Rita asks Denny to come to the theatre and he suggests the “beer keg” instead. Frank invites Rita to a dinner party at his house where she lack confidence and can’t go in because Rita thinks they would all laugh at her, as if she was the “court jester”. Again this shows of how she feels “half-caste” and is not confidant enough to fit in yet with the middle class. After leaving the party Rita meets with her mother who says “we can sing better songs than those”. This makes Rita feel sure to carry on with the course.                                                                        Then Denny gives Rita two options “either stop comin’ hear an’ come off the pill” and “there’s a time for education, or it’s not when you’re twenty-six and married”. By this discriminatory statement Rita finds herself having to break away and escape the grip that men in society held upon her. She leaves Denny, which shows again her determination to become something. This decision changed Rita’s life. This shows her becoming a stronger person and therefore having to forget about Denny and forced to take a new life. When Rita returns from summer school she enjoys herself so much she can’t express it in words “honest, it was – ogh!” At this point Rita is staring to make her own choices. Rita shows her interest in literature to Frank when she recites from memory one of Blake’s poems “O’Rose, thou art sick.” At summer school Rita is more than ever determined to change and be independent and become “more like Trish” and in this way she decides to change her voice “nothing is wrong with it, Frank, I have decided to talk properly”. Rita now isn’t so much “half –caste” anymore. She has also become more confidant discussing literature and putting forward her own point of views. At this point Rita admits to Frank that she has achieved the goals she set out to do. She is more educated and knows the right books to read. By this time Rita herself finds out what it is really means to be educated, and why it is so important to her. She feels cultured and sophisticated. Frank now realises Rita has gone from a uneducated common spoken Liverpudlain girl who wore old dress and told him every little detail about her life and worked in a hairdresser’s shop to a person who is clever educated and doesn’t tell Frank anything anymore. He did not know when she changed jobs “when you were late I phoned the shop the hairdresser’s shop we’re you work or should I have said worked”.                        The people at summer school gave Rita a boost in knowledge and confidence in what she can do, not what Frank can teach her which helped her stick and complete the course. Frank now needs Rita as the roles have reversed. At the beginning Rita needed Frank and Frank was independent now Rita doesn’t need anyone anymore, but Frank is so desperately longing for Rita. This made Frank feel insecure the more Rita was growing in knowledge.                Willy Russell has shown much influence from My fair lady (written by Alan Jay Lerner). The stories are similar as it is the story of Henry Higgins, who transforms the Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle into a society lady through teaching her correct speech. However in this story Eliza has been chosen to be educated where as Rita as took it upon herself to make a change and be educated. Pygmalion has also had a big impact on Russell Educating Rita. This is a story about Pygmalion a sculptor who carved a woman out of ivory. After seeing prostituting he is not interested in women, but his statue is so realistic that he begins to fall in love with it. He offers the statue presents and prays to Venus and brings the statue to life. Again this seems similar as Frank has created what Rita in the end has become and now feels over shadowed by the new Rita, whereas Frank may have seen a very different outcome.                                                                                                 Overall the play when viewed is light- hearted easy to connect with and understand with any age group. The play deals with a number of issues, there are three main issues that run through the play feminism, identity and education. These three main issues allow all who read the play have great understanding on what it feels like to be a women when not given many advantages in life, and how hard it can make life very difficult, and having to give up what you thought you will never achieve. It is also play that shows past society, and the views of two very different people and learn about life itself. As Willy Russell only uses Rita and Frank as the two main characters it allows greater and deeper understanding of each of them and sees what and how they experience though life. Also the pressure society can put on an individual, and the amount of determination needed to break free and that education is to be knowledgeable in life. Bibliography Glynn Jones class notes Educating Rita by author Willy Russell wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion www.willyrussell.com/rita Giselle Lindo