On their first meeting Rita barged through the door into Frank’s room at the university. She shouts and curses at Frank whilst telling him to get his “stupid bleedin’ handle on the door” fixed. Frank was shocked by Rita as she didn’t enter the room timidly and politely like most new students would. Frank is again taken aback by Rita’s outspoken personality when she asks if he thinks that a picture is “erotic” and says “look at those tits”. He chooses his words very carefully to answer her when he decides that “it’s very beautiful”.
As Frank and Rita get to know each other better, his answers to her change from shy and hesitant to witty and coarse. One prime example of this is when Rita says “This Forster, honest to God he doesn’t half get on my tits…” and Frank answers “Good. You must show me the evidence”. Rita is still using ripe language as she did at the beginning of the play, but Frank has changed his polite answers to dry and allusive ones. As the play progresses, Frank and Rita teach one another about life and empathy.
Throughout the play, Frank openly shows Rita that he has feelings for her, but Rita seems disinterested. An example of this is on page twenty-two, “Frank: … what I’d actually like to do is take you be the hand and run out of this room forever”. “Rita: Tch. Be serious… “. “Frank: I am. Right now there’s a thousand things I’d rather do than teach; most of them with you, young lady…”. “Rita: Tch. Oh sod off”. Frank isn’t afraid to show his feelings for Rita, but doesn’t show them in a sensitive or serious manner.
Towards the end of the play Rita and Frank begin to drift apart. This is realised when Frank phones the hair salon that Rita worked at to speak to her, only to find out that she hasn’t been working there for quite a while. Frank seems quite upset at this, as there was “a time when she told him everything”. But Rita insists that a change of jobs is “just boring, insignificant detail”.
Frank doesn’t seem to like the new educated Rita and shows this by making fun of her. “You know, Rita, I think – I think that like you I shall change my name; from now on I shall insist on being known as Mary.”
At the very end of the play Rita has ‘choice’, as she has become educated – unlike she was at the beginning. Frank invites her to Australia, but she refuses, she could go to France, her mother’s, or even have a baby now she has choice. The invite to Australia shows that the friendship is now regained between the two characters.
Overall, throughout the play, Frank and Rita generally grow closer and induce true friendship. They grow apart for a while when Rita is caught up with poetry and literature, and it seemed to be taking over her. She soon comes back to reality when her educated flatmate, Trish, tries to top herself. At the end of the play, Frank and Rita are as close as ever again when Rita is “gonna take ten years off him…”.