Educating Rita
Q. How does Willy Russell present the changes in Rita’s character during the play?
For our GCSE coursework, we studied the play ‘Educating Rita’ which was written by Willy Russell. We were looking at how Rita changed in each area during the course of the play, and what Willy Russell wanted us to understand from watching or reading the play.
Rita is a common 26-year-old woman, looking for an education in an Open University. She hasn’t ever had an education in her life, and works as an everyday hairdresser. Rita thinks that she is not intelligent, and thinks that her life is a waste. She goes to an Open University, to get her education and this is where she meets Frank. Rita isn’t happy with her life; she’s not happy with the same old routine and the same old people, she wants to be happy. She thinks that if she gets an education she will be happy. In the book Willy Russell makes Frank an alcoholic, and Rita cannot understand why he abuses alcohol. For all she is concerned he has “everything” and for Frank to be on the drink it means he is unhappy, and she cant understand why Frank would be unhappy because she thinks he has everything. She thinks that Frank has ‘choice’ in what he does and her boyfriend, Denny, says that choice means 5 different types of beer. Which shows us how narrow minded he is. At the start of the play, Rita hasn’t really got a clue about anything. At the start of her course, she tends to “take the piss” quite a lot; she actually says, “I’m dead serious. Look, I know I take the piss an’ that but I’m dead serious. I take the piss because I'm not y’know, confident like, but I wanna be, honest.” This tells us, that at the start of the play, despite the fact that she doesn’t know a lot she is very willing to learn. I also feel that she knows she doesn’t know a lot because she says “I’ve been realisin’ for ages that I was, y’know slightly out of step” and to me this shows she is lacking in self-confidence. This also shows that she is not content with herself, and where as the people around her are quite happy to live the way they do, she wants more from life. I think that the normal thing in the time she is in now is to be married and have a child by the age of 22, and she is 26 and is neither married or has a child. I think that a part of her also feels she is too old to be in a university and that she feels she doesn’t ft in with her surroundings. She also feels that her life is a failure, and unless she gets some education, it will stay the same for the rest of her life. She says “One day, y’own up to yourself an’ y’ say, is this it? Is this the absolute maximum I can expect form this livin’ ark”. This actually tells us that she feels her life is wasted, and that she wants to do something about it.
