RITA :I hate smokin’ on me own. An’ everyone seems to have packed up these days. They’re all afraid of gettin’ cancer.
I think this is an example of historical context because when the book was written was the time when people first found out about smoking causing cancer, so everyone stopped smoking. Nowadays, everyone knows about all of the dangers and they still smoke. Also, a tutor who drinks whilst he is at work would have been found out very quickly and would definitely been sacked, but in the play his drinking problem does not cause a problem with his work..
When Rita returns home from after summer school you can see she has changed as soon as she walks in. She comes in, in her new second hand dress. As soon as this happens you can tell that she has changed. Soon after that, she starts going on about how fun London was and how much of a good time she had. As soon as she says this Frank assumes that she has not done any work whilst she was away but she tells him that she had to do essay after essay, lecture after lecture.
RITA: Work? We never stopped. Lashin’ is with it they were.
When Rita comes back in, instead of looking as she did before she would have looked like a new person, new hairstyle, new clothes, and new make-up. This would have shown to the audience the change that had happened over the summer period.
RITA: We had a great time…bought all sorts of second hand gear in the markets…ogh it was…
When she gets back she is a changed person, she is a lot more grown up and she has learnt how to look after herself. This does not make Frank very happy when he tells her which poet they will be doing next. He starts talking to her about the next poet and tells her that he is a dead good poet. This is a pun because William Blake, the poet they are going to study, is dead! When he says to her they are doing Blake, Rita replies with “William Blake?” After he tells her to start reading, and she does. Rita, who already knows the poem, recites it to Frank who is very surprised.
Frank: You know it?
She then tells him that she had already studied him because her lecturer was a real “Blake Fanatic”, after this Franks asks her if she has done all the songs of innocence and experience? And Rita replies with “Of course, you don’t do Blake without doing innocence and experience, do y’?
“No of course” is Frank’s quiet reply. Rita then exits; from this scene you get the impression that Frank is quite disappointed that Rita has already done innocence and experience. He was really happy that he was going to teach her all about Blake, now he couldn’t because another lecturer already had. Frank’s student is not clinging to him anymore; she is gaining in self-confidence and moving up in the world, away from Frank. Also in that scene, Rita mentions her new flatmate, Trish. When Frank asks Rita if Trish is a good influence Rita praises Trish saying that she is great and she is dead classy. This shows to the audience that Rita looks up to Trish and that she would like to be like her. This shows that Rita looks up to Rita more than she looks up to Frank.
When Rita enters in Act 2 Scene 2 she starts talking in a peculiar voice, Franks asks her why she is doing it and she replies that she had “ merely decided to talk properly” Frank doesn’t like the way that Rita is trying to talk and says it is quite ugly. Frank says to her “Rita! Just be yourself”, but this is what Rita doesn't want to do, she wants to change, she wants to be a different person, to be more educated. When she decides to talk normally again Frank asks why she has grass on her back and Rita tells Frank that she got to lesson early and started talking to some students on the lawn, Frank seems surprised about this, even though he denies it. When Rita tells Frank that while she was talking to them she was invited to the south of France for Christmas holidays, Frank immediately tells Rita that she cant. He says she can’t go because she has her exams but her exams are before Christmas so he says that she will be waiting for her results. Rita wasn’t even thinking about going anyway, I think that she just wanted to see what Franks reaction was when she said that she was going to go away. I also think that these are just excuses for her not to go, she says that she cannot just jump into a van and go to France, but there is no main reason that she couldn’t. She would have finished her exam and just be waiting for her results and it would have probably been good for her to get away to get away from the stress of the exams. When she start talking about Tiger Franks decides that there is no point in going on with the lesson because Rita is not concentrating on the lesson, she is thinking about going to France with Tiger and all his mates. Frank also decides that Rita is going to fall in love but Rita has no intention of doing anything and that she was only talking to them, nothing else.
RITA: I’ve heard of matchmaking but this is ridiculous.
After their little squabble, Rita asks Frank what her essay was like and Frank gives her the best news she has heard for ages, he tells her that it wouldn’t look out of place with all of the other essays. Rita seems very surprised about this and then the scene finishes happily.
When Frank likens himself to Mary Shelley I think this is quite mean. He is calling Rita a monster. Frank then starts’ going on about how characterless his works is and how rubbish it is.
FRANK: It is pretentious, characterless and without style
Frank feels that Rita has changed for the worse. She is not who she used to be and Frank doesn't like it. She has become educated and Frank feels insecure because she knows a lot more than she did before and Frank feels insecure because she knows a lot more than she did before and almost as much as he does. When she is there and they are talking about the different poems and poets Rita, instead of just agreeing with what Frank says all of the time, had her own views and opinions of different things in life. She has grown away from Frank and is starting to live her own life as a new person. Frank starts saying to Rita that she might not as well bother turning up once in a while out of sentimentality, he also tells her that he cant bear her anymore, which is quite nasty. This also shows a sense of Franks insecurity, by the way Rita is in control of when she wants to go and she doesn't have to go because she hasn’t got a lot more she can learn from Frank, he has taught her almost everything he knows.
This seams to me that Rita is in control of her own life, and also her relationship with Frank, she has found out for herself that she has no need to go every week. She has her own independence.
Near to the end of the play Frank realises what has happened, he has helped Rita to gain her own independence and she has taken it. She does not need his help anymore, he was just a teacher that she needed to help her change herself and become a new woman. I think that in the end Rita has accomplished what she wanted to, she wanted to find herself and I think she has done that. She comes back to see Frank at Christmas and see what he has done with himself, she finds out that he is still working there and that he is packing all of his books into cases. Frank is going to Australia.
They have both gone their separate ways and have changed quite a bit. I think the ending makes you think that they are going to leave together but in the end they both go their separate ways. He makes you think that when Rita says “ I’m gonna take ten year off you…” she might be suggesting something, but the she goes and starts to cut his hair. I think that was very good.