Explain how Rita's background and environment were a poor song and show how this reflects Russell's own experiences.

Authors Avatar

“Found a better song to sing have you? No you’ve found a different song that’s all and on your lips it’s shrill hollow and tuneless.” In the light of this quotation from ‘Educating Rita’ explain how Rita’s background and environment were a poor song and show how this reflects Russell’s own experiences. Why does Frank accuse her of singing a ‘shrill, hollow and tuneless’ song How far would you agree with his assessment of her and how do the main characters resolve their differences at the end of the play?

The character of Rita is based on Willy Russell himself; both of their backgrounds are ‘Poor songs’. They come from the same kind of poor, deprived, working class, Liverpool family, in situations were education is considered a low priority, a culture where family-raising and work are the cornerstones of life and the roles of the man as breadwinner, leader, head of the family and the woman as loving wife, home-maker and child-bearer are set in stone. Both Rita and Russell went to tough schools were people were bullied and ruled by fear, where those who wanted to learn were stopped by intimidation and those who were different were singled out, picked on, isolated.

As a result neither of them received an adequate education. However they did, of course, have to go out and work so they were forced, by pressures from their families, to find a job and earn. No matter that it was something they didn’t enjoy, or even understand, they had to go out to work, earn, get married and start a family. This was the plan for life, the standard model which was applied to them both by their families and friends and they were either going to have to follow it or reject it and with it reject their loved ones. Whilst Rita was probably always destined to become a ladies hairdresser, for Russell hairdressing was a ‘lucky’ escape from the dreaded ‘factory fodder’ life which he had feared since childhood. He had seemed equally destined to fall into it from the ‘D-stream’ which his life was set upon but after failing his exams and avoiding work in his underground club he eventually came out to face his family and after the arguments he was, after a random comment from his mother that he become a hairdresser, packed off to college to study something he was completely uninterested in but, for lack of any better suggestions for a career choice, he went along with it and in the end both Rita and Russell ended up as hairdressers, fulfilling the ‘common ritual called employment’.

Join now!

When Rita began the course she knew that she was highly ignorant of classical literature and performing arts such as opera and theatre and she is ashamed of it. Russell presents Rita as a character driven largely by her shame. Long ago Rita came to the realization that she was unfulfilled in her life, Frank asks her: ‘What is it that’s suddenly led you to this?’ Rita says: ‘It’s not sudden’. Even in school she was frustrated, she was led along by the peer pressure from her friends and, maybe because she had not properly realized that she wanted ...

This is a preview of the whole essay