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 disrupt their relationship as Rita won’t idolise his educated speaking, style etc. in the same sort of way.
Rita’s name change is a good way to measure the change in herself. At the beginning, in the 1st scene she calls herself Rita although her real name’s Susan. She names herself after a novelist and I think this shows how she wants to be educated and also that she is rejecting her birth name and the society she is born in.
Rita enrols in the University course because she feels trapped in a society and a marriage that doesn’t understand her. She admits to Frank that even in school “there was always somethin’ in me head, tappin’ away” questioning whether this “is the absolute maximum I can expect from this living lark.” She wants to know, and understand “everything” so she can make choices on what she thinks of it, she wants to be able to talk “seriously, confidently, with knowledge, livin’ a civilised life.” So she tried to escape from a place where she feels “out of step” because she hasn’t had a baby, to find culture and art which she thinks will give her life meaning. She tries to express this when she talks about people not talking about “things that matter” showing how she longs for people who understand her. With Frank she talks and talks, she even goes to the university just to tell him about her discovery of Macbeth, showing there is no one else she can tell.
Rita feels that the course is “providing her with life itself”, “feeding” her inside is a stark comparison to what she finds in her flatmate, Trish who despite art and literature and music and culture, all the things Rita has been striving for tries to commit suicide. I think the culture that Rita wants although superior on the outside can sometimes be very pretentious which isolates the person, stopping them communicating their real feelings or fears because their scared of what other people might think. It’s one thing to appreciate art and literature but to live for it is an empty kind of life and I think Frank in a way might be trying to protect Rita from this.
You can see Rita’s dislike for the people she lives and works around when she says things like “I hate them. This shows how she isolates herself from her class in society, she doesn’t believe that she is one of them, more her against “them”, she feels very different, maybe above them because she’s striving for something else out of her life. When she says“ It’s like drug addicts isn’t it, they hate it when one of them breaks away.” It shows how hard she finds it to escape, trapped by their opinions. By comparing “them” to drug addicts Rita expresses just how low in society she feels they are, she talks about a hidden disease to try and explain to Frank how unhappy she thinks her class is, despite how hard they try to cover it. This is why she wants to change and break out of the traditional ‘wife’; ‘mother’ labels and expectations people have put on her.
As Rita very slowly starts to learn about English literature she begins her change. Frank and Rita grow closer as they start to get to know each other better, with a bit of flirtation from Frank, “Right now there’s a thousand things I’d rather do then teach, most of them with you, young lady”. This shows the intimacy of their relationship even though Rita kindly brushes him off. Rita begins to experience new things like the theatre. Before when she saw them on T.V she says “y’ switch it off an’ say, that’s fuckin’ rubbish”. Later she’s bubbling with enthusiasm for Macbeth which she thinks “bleedin’ great”, this shows how much she’s changed, she’s sort of starting to appreciate and understand her course more.
Rita soon gets to the point in her learning and change where she is stuck in-between of two classes, she says she’s a “half-caste”. Her working class family and friends feel rejected like she doesn’t want them any more, yet she is too intimidated to talk to the students at the university or any other middle class people.
The situation with the dinner party that Julia (Frank’s partner) is holding, shows that despite Rita’s new found confidence she is still very nervous around other educated people. You can see this in act 1 scene 6, when Rita is invited to the dinner party her sentences get very short from the long speeches full of enthusiasm she was using before, “oh”, “”if y’ want”, “All right”. By doing this Willy Russell conveys how unsure Rita is.
Rita doesn’t go to the dinner party because she feels out of place, she’d brought the “wrong sort of wine” and all her dresses looked “bloody awful”, she feels unable to talk to any of “the likes of them”. She explains her situation really well to Frank telling him “I’m a freak. I can’t talk to the people I live with any more. An’ I can’t talk to the likes of them on Saturday, or them out there, because I can’t learn the language”, Rita calling herself a freak shows how strange she feels, to be unlike anyone else, stuck in the middle. She seems to be cut off from anyone but Frank, and so she is very reliant on him, I think Frank likes this as it makes him feel needed and important, even though he wants her to “learn the language” and be able to talk to everyone. When Rita says she “can’t learn the language”, she expresses how hard it is to talk to everyone, like they’re speaking a different language. After the dinner party Rita briefly lapsed back to her old way of life, to the pub but then her mother cries because they “could sing better songs than these” and Rita becomes more determined than ever to continue her education
This comes to a climax when Rita leaves her husband, he forces her to choose between him and her education and she chooses her education. This is an example of how much she’s changed from the girl who might be “packin’ the course in” if she gets the wrong tutor to one who is sacrificing her marriage for the sake of her education. This dramatic shift in her priorities shows just how much stronger and changed she is, I think it also marks the point where Rita can’t go back to how it was before. When Frank is talking to Rita about her Macbeth essay he tells her that if she wants to write essays like other students then she going to have to change. Frank doesn’t want to tell her how to though because he wants her to stay as she is, he says that what she has is “valuable”. I think that while Rita sees her self as a “half-caste” not fitting into either world, but wanting to fit into the educated one. Frank sees her as “unique” and brilliant, he has experienced the educated world, got to the high status of University professor yet is still unsatisfied and finds it empty. He doesn’t want Rita to give up her “uniqueness” her witty, intelligent, character which he admires so much to become like all the other students, writing the same sort of essays. Rita now makes a choice to go on, to change so that she can write essays “like those” and pass exams like “they do”.
I think that it is after the summer school that we see the biggest change in Rita, she comes back twirling and bursting with energy and her new clothes symbolise the change in her. Rita’s language, relationship with Frank and her mood have also changed. The analogy that Rita uses about Frank’s room shows the change in her language and control of the conversation. First Rita tries to make Frank go outside then she tries to open the window to bring air into Frank’s room, I think she is trying to bring ideas and energy into his life like summer school has done for her. She says “A room is like a plant, it needs air” and when he takes apart her analogy suggesting things like they should “germinate other little rooms”, he challenges her and Rita surprises him by replying that “any analogy will break down eventually.” Not only does she understand “analogy” she is talking like an educated person and talking control of the conversation.
The relationship with Frank is definitely changed by Rita’s ability to talk to other people; she says that she “can talk now” so it seems she’s learned the “language” which she couldn’t before. She has the “crowd” who she stuck with all week and she has Trish who’s she says is “dead classy” with “taste, Y’ know like you, Frank”. This means that now Frank’s not the only person that Rita looks up to and this alters the relationship making her less dependant on him, this makes Frank feel less central to her life and a bit hurt. He talks about her walking away and disappearing, I think he does this to maybe make her feel guilty, or to get her reassurance that she’s not going away, this is the beginning of their role reversal, as at the beginning it was Rita constantly asking for reassurance. Another influence on their relationship is Blake; Frank’s been saving Blake for her and you can tell that he was looking forward to introducing the poet and watch her marvel, he says, “you’ll love the man”. When it turns out that she’s already “done” him you can see that Frank’s put out, his sentences get short and vicious, “You know it.” “No. Of course”, “Blake at summer school?” Rita rambles on unaware laughing and talking about the lecturer which seems to make Frank feel even more put out. I think that this is the start of when they start to drift apart.
In scene 2 (act 2) Rita tries to talk “properly” in order to become more like her flat mate Trish and be accepted in the new educated class that she finds herself in. This is a big rejection of her roots, her accent is a big part of who she is and where she came from and by changing that she is trying to change a big part of her self. Frank finds this new Rita pretentious and annoying and he exclaims “Rita! Just be yourself”, Frank wants her to be like the girl who came in here that admired him so much and eventually she stops, claiming she is being herself. I think that Frank‘s quite similar to Denny (Rita’s ex husband): in some ways neither of them want Rita to change, just like Denny when he protested Rita leaves him as she leaves Frank. She hates being held back.
Rita and Frank seem to switch roles and there is lots of evidence of this in Act 2 scene 3. Frank is swearing and using Rita’s expressions “off my cake” and “assonance means getting the rhyme wrong”. They discuss Rita’s essay which Frank doesn’t like because she’s not interpreted in his way or even her way but Trish’s and others who she’s discussed it with. Rita is able to discuss it confidently bringing up points that he’d told her to do, Frank is taken aback and they drift further apart.
Frank and Rita’s relationship deteriorates through the 2nd act, at one point he gives her his poems to test how much she’s changed and if she’s still got a mind of her own that’s not dictated by Trish and her other friends. Frank thinks that his poems are “pyrotechnical, worthless, talentless shit”. He feels they are not poetry but clever words with no true feelings behind them. So he gives them to Rita to critically analyse to see if she can see them for what they really are instead of being taken in by the clever words like she has been with Trish and others. This is another example of role reversal as in the beginning it was Rita who was testing Frank. When Rita comes back bursting with admiration for his poems and quoting Trish, he responds with sarcasm. “Just think if I’d let you see it when you first came here” she wouldn’t have “understood” it. Now she thinks she can understand she says “I can see it now”, when Frank rubbishes her opinion by telling her what he thinks of the poems Rita comes back at him. Again she hates being held back and she accuses Frank of not liking her now that he can’t tell her things and watch her “stare back with wide-eyed admiration” she tells Frank she doesn’t need him any more. I think Frank’s vindictive final insults in this scene really sum up the situation “found a better song to sing have you? No you’ve found a different song that’s all.” This not only shows how much he listens to her picking up on her words. It shows how he sees Rita situation, he can see that she’s been sucked in by her supposed ‘culture’ and art and literature. She says she now knows what “clothes to wear, what wine to buy, what plays to see, what papers and books to read” but he sees all that as “very, very little”.
Rita’s name change completes the change in herself, she changes it back to Susan because she sees calling herself Rita as “pretentious crap”. This is not because she’s embracing her roots again but because she no longer admires the author she named it after and maybe because of Trish’s influence.
Eventually Rita passes her exams and comes back to Frank to thank him and tell him he’s a good teacher. She has been shaken out of her false world by the attempted suicide of her flat mate Trish and she explains to Frank that although he thinks he gave her nothing but “a load of quotes and empty phrases” it wasn’t him that did that. She was just too “hungry” for everything. Frank gave her an education which gave her a choice, she could chose whether or not to do the exam and she choose to do it. Now she has done the exam she says “I might go to me mother’s, I might even have a baby. I dunno, I’ll make a decision, I’ll choose.” This shows how Rita is at a point where she can choose what to do next, she is confident and although she admits the exam might have been “worthless” it still gives her a choice. Her education has given her the chance to take control of her own life.
I think Willy Russell clearly shows how education can change people and how others around them react to the changes, that’s one of the main themes of the play. Willy Russell grew up in a place where he wasn’t expected to learn or be anything more then a factory worker and he saved up money and took a course to help him become a writer. I think that Willy’s attitude to education comes through in the events and situations Rita’s faced with, sure education gives you choices: but you have to make sure you make the right ones!