Rita then asks Frank for his opinion about a painting “is it supposed to be erotic” Frank seems shocked by some stranger asking him such a question and tries to avoid the subject by saying “actually I haven’t looked at it for ten years”. This also shows another contrast between Rita and Frank, as upper class people don’t talk openly about nudity and even if they did they will think of it, as art where as if you showed a picture like that to a common person they would think it is erotic.
“borin’, ripped-up books, broken glass everywhere, knives an’ fights.” This was how Rita’s education was like she was a follower. She felt that she had to follow what everybody was doing but now she is breaking out of her shell and is learning how to make her own choices.
Rita tells Frank everything that is going through her head. She opens up to him “like what you’ve got to be into is music an’ clothes”. She tells him everything even though she hasn’t known him that long this shows that Rita as a character is a straight forward person and is very talkative
“Why did y’ split up?” Rita is very interested in Frank’s personal life and pesters Frank with questions regarding his social life which frank does not want to answer “Rita! Tch.” But yet she still pesters him and he finally gives up and tells her about his marriage and how it didn’t work out.
Rita found the work that Frank gave her quite hard “what you have to learn is criticism” she doesn’t know the difference between a lot of things like putting her own opinions in and criticising something that she does not like. A good example of this is Howard’s end when Frank asks for her opinion Rita says “it was crap” she doesn’t support her answer which is ok seeing as she does not know how to criticise but then Frank explains it all to her.
Rita does not understand classical literature which we the audience can understand because Rita took the course because she likes to read pulp fiction in her spare time and she thought that was what the English course about. But when Frank gives her an essay to do on “ibsen’s peer Gynt” she writes a one-line essay that is the basis of an argument, which is less than what Frank expected of her. We the audience can empathise because you cant just give someone a essay to write if they don’t know how to write one its like telling someone to bake a cake without giving them the recipe.
“You write your essays at work?” Frank discovers that Rita writes her essays at work because “Denny gets dead narked” if she works at home therefore she writes poor quality essays when she’s got the potential to write excellent ones.
So far I see Rita as a determined character because if she weren’t determined she would not go to an open university she would not disobey her husband and go to get an education when she really should be sitting at home with couple of kids. This shows that Rita is ambitious and has goals that she wants to achieve like for example she wants to break away from her background but to do this you need determination and that is exactly what Rita is doing.
To help Rita understand the “chekhov play” Frank suggests that she should go to the theatre so Rita asks frank to come with her and frank says no. So she goes on her own and sees Macbeth “I had to come an’ tell y’ frank, last night I went to the theatre” Rita thinks that the theatre is so amazing and tells frank all about it and frank explains to her the difference between tragic and tragedy
When Rita was supposed to go and have dinner with Frank and Julia she does not turn up. Her reason for this was that she did not know what wine to pick and when she did pick one she had picked the wrong one that was Spanish plonk. She felt embarrassed by this because if you are going to take some sort of drink you take champagne and Rita turns up with Spanish plonk this says something about her class and where she comes. It just shows that working class people don’t get invited to many formal parties or dinners.
After writing Frank an apology note Rita goes to the pub where all her family were and she sees that her mother is crying and when every one asks her what’s wrong with her she doesn’t tell any one of them but when Rita asks her why she’s crying she says “because we could sing better songs than those”. What she’s trying to say is that if this is the high light of our week coming here and singing and making a fool out of our selves when if we tried we could do better than that. So that’s why Rita comes back and says that she is staying because if she could get and education at the age of 26 then maybe other people would follow her example and try to break away from the society that they are in.
Rita gets kicked out of her home by her husband because he finds out she’s still on the pill when she said that she had stopped so he feels that he cant take it any more therefore he finishes the relationship. ”He said either I stop comin’ here an’ come off the pill or I could get out altogether” I think it’s a good idea that they have split because all Denny was doing was putting her down and in the way of her education. The whole point of a marriage is to support each other in what ever they do and Denny was not supporting Rita in what she was doing in fact he was actually protesting against what she was doing.
Frank tells Rita that if she were to produce better essays she has to change but feels reluctant to teach her if she does change because he believes what she already has is very valuable. Rita feels that she does want to change and tells Frank to be straight with her, to tell her if the essay that she does is not good so that she understands and learns from her mistakes.
Rita goes to summer school where she stays for one week she attends lectures and learns more. “I was dead scared” she tells Frank how scared she was and that she wanted to come home the audience can emphasise with the emotion that she is feeling because if you go somewhere where you haven’t been before and you don’t know any one you do tend to feel a bit scared. The audience see that Rita is beginning to be more confident because she asks the lecturer a question in front of all the students who she was once afraid but now is starting to know them better since she went to summer school
When she comes back from summer school she moves into her new flat where her new roommate is Trish. The first impression we get of Trish is when Rita moves in her and she is listening to classical music something that Frank would listen to and we get the impression that she is like a female version of Frank.
Rita also starts to make friends with in Rita’s words “the proper students” whom she was once afraid “you used to be quite wary of them” of now she has become good friends with them. This shows that Rita has changed it shows that she has become more confident and I think the thing that triggered it was summer school.
Now she seems to be spending a lot of time with Trish and less more time with Frank and when she does go to see him she is late “am I late” she doesn’t seem to care about Frank any more even though it was Frank that taught her to be the person she is now. “I think that like you I shall change my name; from now on I shall insist upon being known as Mary, Mary Shelley” what Frank is trying is that he has created a monster which is Rita because before she used to tell him everything now she doesn’t even that she has changed her job to work in a bistro.
I also think that Rita starts to change when she starts to live with Trish she tries to imitate everything that Trish does like for instance “Trish says there is not a lot of point in discussing beautiful literature in an ugly voice”. I think she looks up to Trish because she’s like a female version of frank except for fact that frank wasn’t trying to reform her and Trish is. But in the end Rita realises that Trish isn’t all she seems to be “she spends half her life eatin’ foods …an’ the other half tryin’ to kill herself”
We do feel sympathetic towards Rita because she starts to go back to her own self towards the end. So what did she get out of it she gets an education, which is what she always wanted, but the question is it all worth it because if you look at what she has lost trying to get an education she has lost her husband. All the students she made friends and Trish she nearly lost Frank all because she was on the path to discover who she was.
My personal opinion is that when she starts to get educated she snubs off frank even though Frank is a higher class to her yet she goes and makes friends with Trish who Rita thinks knows everything but she really doesn’t know everything. Yes she may know which music to listen to and what to say to people but she is a hypocrite.
I think by the end of the play Rita achieves an education, which is going to give her lots of choices in her life, she is her own self towards the end and she has her own individuality and she doesn’t use other peoples opinions she has own. Also by the end of the play we the audience start to like Rita again because she is her self. I think Russell was trying to show in Educating Rita that everyone has a choice in life no matter what you do and that you should not follow others and don’t let peer pressure get to you
