Frank is educated to a high standard and has lots of knowledge, which is academic- out of books- not really practical knowledge for living- everything is second hand. Rita is practical minded and straightforward. Her non academic way of beginning a discussion about the picture on the wall “erotic, “men-only” and her contradictory views on smoking “challenging death and disease” show a non-specific approach on things. The conversation between Frank and Rita often doesn’t work as they think of different things when talking about literature. Frank has little knowledge about popular culture and pulp fiction while Rita does:
Frank “Ah Dylan Thomas...”
Rita “No. Roger McGough.”
Or
Rita “Farrah Fawcett Majors.”
Frank “Who”
Rita “Far-rah Fawcett Majors. Y’ know, she used to be with Charlie’s Angels”
One of the many changes that we notice in Rita’s character is when Frank asks her what her name is in Act 1 scene 1 and Rita says that she had changed her name from Susan White to Rita white after Rita Mae Brown. She has not only tried to change her education but has tried to change her own identity as well. She wants a completely fresh start from the “old” Rita as she is trying to change the level of her education to a higher one. She wants to belong to a different culture, to talk to someone about “things that matter” and to have a kind of deepness in her life.
In scene two she talks about the choice she has between buying another dress or doing the course which in the end decides to do, as she wants to change from the inside, not from the outside. This particular scene reveals more about Rita’s background and the position she is in, as a lower class-pupil. She wanted to go to boarding school when she was younger but she points out that studying was for “whimps”. She describes the working of a tough society of working-class people where differing mainstream is not allowed. To her she views working-class people as “drug-addicts”- they don’t like it when somebody turns away from the crowd. Frank and Rita become very ironical particularly when Frank starts talking about what he would like to do with Rita “discipline that mind of yours”. Frank is not completely satisfied with his life, he doesn’t like his work or his students who he tutors but he can also behave like a real tutor should. He makes conditions clear and points out that “possessing a hungry mind is not in itself a guarantee of success”.
The discussion about working class culture reveals the attitudes of both characters towards different cultures, the class system and how to achieve something in life. “Culture” isn’t really defined and so both characters have different views on it. Rita connects culture with happiness, and as culture is connected to the upper class, she has to get educated as a means of getting happy or content with her life.
In this play we are exposed to two different types of language or two different ways of talking Upper class “well spoken” English and lower class English. When the professor talks he is easily understood but when Rita sometimes speaks it is hard to understand what she is saying “bleedin’, poor sod, get pissed, crap” she has a pronunciation, and accent of the north of England we are not used to. For example the word “my” is usually pronounced “me” and the words mother and so on are said as they are written.
In scene five Rita’s husband Danny has burned all of her books because he found out that she was on the pill, Frank wants to talk about the problem but she’d rather talk about Chekhov. Rita is able to understand herself and her circumstances clearly and almost gets things right. After she had an argument with Danny, she finds that it is her that has to change, and she wants to go on with her education. Frank said, “Sod the books” which shows that he is changing too. He doesn’t use this sort of language, which Rita normally uses, but acquires it. Rita talks about how literature and the arts and how it fills her life. After pubs and new clothes take the place of life in the lower class, she is happy to find out that she can do better. This is a sure change because in the beginning of the play she didn’t have that much self-confidence. She has realised that just because she has come from a lower class society it does not mean that she cannot become a successful woman. When Frank invites Rita to his dinner party and she doesn’t turn up both Frank and Rita are embarrassed. Rita didn’t go because she didn’t want to be “court jester”, but Frank doesn’t understand her. Frank likes her a lot and the way she talks about things, he wanted her to be there because he did not want to be surrounded by upper class people. Rita calls herself a “half-caste” and tells Frank about her mother crying in the pub because she thought, “we could sing better songs than these”. The change is now inevitable when she decides “that’s why I’m staying”.
In scene eight, Rita points out the change she has already undergone- this change is the difference between her boyfriend Danny, which makes a joint life impossible. Rita lived and acted like Danny in a way before, but changed and betrayed him because of that, as she herself says. Danny’s attitudes towards her and her life are crystal-clear, he doesn’t want her to change, he’s got a traditional way of thinking “ your twenty six you should have had a baby by now” and he wants the old Rita back. Rita doesn’t value the uniqueness she’s got. She wants to completely change herself. She wants to change herself for the sake of change. Frank thinks about quitting teaching her “What you already have is valuable”. For Frank Rita is unique and therefore he doesn’t want to change her. Willy Russell uses Frank to help show the change in Rita. By the end of the first act we find that Rita will stop at nothing and Frank finds that she will give up everything he finds so unique about her and become a person just like him.
In Act 2 Rita has gained more confidence and her ability to “perform” at summer school is clear. Frank knows that soon she will ‘walk away and disappear’. Frank knows that she soon won’t need him anymore as he says to her “You’ve got to”. She shows Frank this when she tells him about having “already done Blake’s poetry”- she is leaving him behind and moving on without him. During the next scene, Rita talking to the other students and her invitation to go off with them to the south of France and her new voice, strengthens the gap between her and Frank. While Frank deteriorates by drinking more and falling over during a lecture, Rita becomes more distant. Frank knows that there is “nothing of you” in the essay she does on Blake, but ironically it will get a good mark in the exam. She is now a real student, but not, in Frank’s eyes, the ‘real’ woman she was.
Rita asks him to “leave her alone” because she doesn’t need him to “hold her hand”. As she becomes more confident and ‘educated’ she is slowly but surely moving away from Frank. Frank knows that she has lost sight of the things “that matter”- her knowledge of people and ‘real’ life- but Rita doesn’t know that. Her ‘education’ has begun to turn her into a snob and she has turned away from her roots to such an extent that she is now a stranger.
Frank comments on Rita when she criticises his poetry he say’s he has ”done a fine job on you”. He say’s it is a “heap of shit” because it has no essence of real life. She has just found a different song to sing. Now he doesn’t like Rita much and sees her as an arrogant person.
The final scene is a kind of settlement, but the outcome is left hanging. Rita is now her own woman- Frank is going to Australia. She now can make her own decisions and her education is complete in that sense. Frank has also learned something and now has the opportunity for a new start, but we do not know what will happen to either of them after.
Frank has an education and Rita wants it. Frank’s education made him a lonely and embittered man. Rita’s education turns her into a different person, but is this new person doesn’t turn out to be a complete positive result. Rita’s education changes her into a different woman- stronger, more resilient and also moves her out of the lower, working class into a world which is more challenging but presumably not so fair as the one she leaves behind. She does pay a price, by leaving Danny and not having a baby yet, she gets what she want’s, an education.
In the play, education is portrayed as a game when they are in the university – not going there for the need of an education but to acquire the lifestyle that an ‘educated’ person would so. Frank doesn’t know this game, but Rita does and at the end of the play she realises what it has done to her. At the beginning of the play she is an ‘uneducated’ woman, who knows little about academic things but has a lot of experience about life. She doesn’t value the knowledge which she already has much. She throws away her old life and what she gets back - Frank thinks- is much less valuable.
But to Rita, education is a way out of mediocrity into a superior lifestyle. The tragedy is that she pays for it by becoming a different person.
