Having fallen in love again, with the man who stole her heart as a teenager, she is desperate to accept his marriage proposal. Her son is being incredibly faithful to his father by objecting the marriage, but at the same time is showing no compassion for his mother.
I think that Hardy purposely made Sophy a very weak character to reflect the attitude and class of women during the 19th century. He does not really develop her as a character, as it is only Sam who sees her as a person, with her own views and opinions. Sam her love, is the only person who treats her like she is a normal person. This shows society’s attitude to her. Her son is thoroughly embarrassed and ashamed of his mother too.
In contrast to this, there is Rita and her life. Having been brought up as a working class girl also, she is surprisingly the complete opposite of Sophy, however similar some aspects of their lives are. Rita is very confident, outgoing and willing to put in the effort to change her life for the better. She is a much stronger character than Sophy is. Rita is also uneducated, but she is unhappy about this to the extent where she des something about it.
Neither Sophy nor Rita fit in. They are both incongruous to their surroundings. Rita does not fit in with the working class anymore, as she feels she is able to do better for herself. But then she is also not comfortable in trying to fit in with Frank, and his middle class way of life. Like when she went round to go round Frank’s house for a dinner party, she did not turn up because she didn’t think she would fit in. “But I don’t want to be me” she said when Frank told her to just be herself. She went to the pub instead of the dinner party, where her mother started to cry, saying “we could sing better songs than these.” This shows that she, as well as Rita, wants better than that. Neither are happy.
We learn more about, and become closer to Rita’s character than we do Sophy’s. This is possibly due to the fact that Rita is far more outgoing, but most probably due to the fact that “Educating Rita” is a play with only two characters, rather than “the Son’s veto” which is a short story, with more than two characters in it.
Rita seems to think that if she can aspire to be more knowledgeable, more intellectual, and more interesting, then all of her problems would be solved. That people like that live the perfect lives, and that they get everything easily. It isn’t until her friend Trisha, her knowledgeable, intellectual, sharp friend Trisha tries to kill herself, that she realises that their lives are not always as admirable as she imagines.
All together, despite being very similar in class, Rita and Sophy do not have many similar opportunities. This is definitely because of the times. Society is definitely on Rita’s side, whereas everything is going against Sophy. Rita has rights. She has the opportunity to change her life, to make a difference. Rita wants to escape working class, while Sophy is desperate to fit back into it.
Society’s opinions of single women are far higher in the 20th Century than in the 19th. For example, Rita is able to get a flat, on her own, as a single woman. She is able to share a flat with another woman, a man too if that was what she wanted to do. She has the ability, the freedom, and the right to choose her own future, her own way of life. Sophy on the other hand, she has to live in the house of her late husband, living off of the money that he left behind. Even if she wasn’t going to marry Sam, and was just going to live with him, she would be unable to, as this was socially unacceptable.
Sophy married the vicar, her first husband when she was just 19. She was socially inferior to him, and she also did not love him. We see her just before she gets married, and she is with Sam. They are together on the field of the farm, enjoying themselves. Sophy is outgoing, lively and flirtatious. Then she marries the vicar, and they move away, and make a clean start, because of their difference in class. She does not marry the vicar because of love, but because she respects him, and believes he will be able to give her a good life. When he dies at an early age, she is left to raise their son alone. Their son was brought up as a middle class, and Sophy was still struggling to be good enough for the son, especially the death of the Vicar. His will is arranged immaculately, so that when he dies, everything has been sorted out for Sophy, so she does not need to do things herself.
Sophy’s son is ashamed that his mother is of working class. He is humiliated at the way she talks, the mistakes she makes, and the more she tried to please him, the further away she pushes him. When Sophy and Sam meet up again, for the first time ever since they were teenagers
*need to finish the rest of relationships section*
Willy Russell’s motive for writing this play, is trying to get the message across that education and a middle class lifestyle is not the only answer to happiness. The play gets an immediate reaction, and immediate impact because of the live audience. It entertains and uses humour to get across points about class, attitudes to class, and education.
Hardy’s short story was not written to amuse us, but to bring out the emotions of the reader. Whereas Russell uses humour to make his points, hardy uses the story to show us the bitterness of family, and other people’s opinions of class. This story has no happy ending, it ends up with the good characters, Sam and Sophy in pain. Sophy dies, and Sam is left to grieve her death. All the while, Sophy and the Vicar’s son is left alone, happy, as it seemed he would have rather been faithful to his late father, and see his mother die unhappy, than to let her marry Sam.
William Hardy, using archaic language, wrote “The Son’s Veto” in the 19th century. His characters often used language like this “seems a reckless waste of successful fabrication”. We do not use language like that today, and they did not either during the time of “Educating Rita”. Hardly uses the dialogue to show the class of his characters. For instance, we learn that Sophy and Sam are of the same class. This is shown by their Wessex accents. Through the dialogue, we notice that they are extremely comfortable with each other. “I never even said I liked ‘ee; and its all your own doing, coming after me”. They were very jolly, friendly and flirty.
“Educating Rita”, which is a play, is therefore written as dialogue. The story is about the two characters, Frank and Rita, and the way they interact with one another. This way, we get to learn about these characters at a more intimate level. Whereas in the short story, Hardy does not go into great detail about his characters. That is because it is a short story, and he ahs to skip over the important events, and use links like “some four years after” for example.
We learnt of the class’s in “the son’s veto” through dialogue. Russell does the exact same thing in “educating Rita” as Hardy. Rita speaks with a strong liverpudlian accent, and she swears, and speaks very much like someone of working class. This is one of the ways in which e learn about her background.
In “the son’s veto”, the vicar and his son speak in Standard English, just like Frank in “Educating Rita”. Both Hardy and Russell go into detail about appearances, and the surroundings of the characters. Hardy’s short story is more descriptive and he goes into great detail about Sophy’s hair.
Russell is able to describe the characters and their surroundings through stage directions. We mainly learn about the two characters through their interactions and the way they talk to one another. He has limited the play to having only two characters, but where Hardy selects the important scenes and events, Russell uses offstage characters and events to give us more information about them. For example we hear about how Rita’s husband, Denney, burns her books.
I prefer the play “educating Rita”, and its characters, to “the sons veto”. This is because of a few reasons, mainly due to the fact that we get to know the characters better in the play. I also feel that this is because “Educating Rita” is closer to our times. An off-putting factor of “the Son’s Veto” is the fact that I felt sorry for Sophy. I pitied her too much, and felt too sympathetic towards her that I didn’t really get interested in her character.