How does Rita's character change and her relationship with Frank alter during the course of the play?

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How does Rita’s character change and her relationship with Frank alter during the course of the play?

“Educating Rita” is the story of a married working-class woman, Rita, trying to better and discover herself by attending an open university course. The play follows her as her character and relationship with her tutor, Frank develop and change until she finally passes her exams and they part.

Rita completely transforms herself through her education and by the end she can choose what to do next rather then being swept along by circumstances and everyone else’s expectations. Rita says that she only wants a baby when she’s got choice and by educating herself she is getting choices. Willy Russell writes that “education gives you a choice” and I think by this he means lots of different types of choice. Firstly it gives you choices on careers and your future jobs, you have a lot more options with education, education helps you see different views and different ways of thinking and teaches you about different choices. You can choose whether or not to accept them. If you are educated on a subject you won’t feel ignorant and you can choose if you want to express your views or not, instead of keeping quiet because you don’t know.

 In educating Rita there are lots of examples of Rita becoming more able to choose to express her views because she has been educated. When she encounters a group of students on the lawn in Act 2 scene 2, a student starts talking “rubbish” and Rita makes a choice to correct him. She tells Frank that she thought “I could keep walkin’ and ignore it or I can put him straight. So I put him straight”, the uneducated Rita wouldn’t have had those choices.

At the beginning of the play Rita is nervous and unconfident, she needs constant reassurance from Frank asking questions to check his opinions against hers, “Do y’ think I’ll be able to do it?” She hides this by being cocky and in your face. She barges into Frank’s office harassing him about the “bleeding’ handle on the door” testing Frank with her swearing and reference to the “tits” on his religious painting. She later admits that this is because she’s nervous, but because the start is so memorable, the audience are struck by the change in Rita at the end. Although Frank is taken back by her brash behaviour and tries to counter it and take control with long words, like “embrace a more comprehensive scholarship” you can see him warming to her. Despite the social differences I think that they are alike in quite a few ways, they are both unsatisfied with their situation and their partners and they both share little rebellions against authority. Smoking, that Frank promised not to do and which “everyone seems to of packed up”, “afraid of getting cancer”, swearing which “doesn’t half cause a fuss” in the hairdressers where Rita works and drinking which “kills y’ brain cells”.

I think this brings them closer together, Rita admits that she wouldn’t have stayed if she had got “some other teacher, who objected to swearing” which is a quiet vote of confidence in Franks character. Frank tells Rita that he thinks she’s “Marvellous” and “the first breath of fresh air that’s been in this room for years.” Frank likes Rita because she’s unlike other students, she’s genuine (despite the cockiness) and funny in a self-deprecating way, not afraid to laugh at herself and intelligent. Rita likes Frank because he’s not perfect, he drinks and swears and smokes and she feels she can relate to him like that while admiring and idolising him on his knowledge, education, and style. So at the beginning after Frank has finished being stuffy and putting Rita down with his abrupt superior sentences, “you are?” and long words, the relationship is good, it’s a bit tentative and Frank still “erm” s quite a lot though.

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Frank is very reluctant to teach Rita, he thinks he’s an “appalling teacher” who knows “absolutely nothing”, this shows how much worth his years of studying and education mean to him, he doesn’t seem to believe that they have taught him anything of what he considers real value. In act 1 scene 2 Frank suggests that something is wrong with education, I think that he doesn’t want Rita to become educated and therefore change because he like her the way she is. If Rita becomes educated it will mean they are both on the same sort of level which will ...

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