To what extent is "Educating Rita" a play about being trapped? You may refer to the text and film in your answer.

Authors Avatar

To what extent is “Educating Rita” a play about being trapped?   You may refer to the text and film in your answer.

Altaf Korimbocus

In this essay I will comment on how this play is about being trapped play. William Russell was born in Whiston, just outside Liverpool, in 1947. At primary school he enjoyed reading, football and gardening, these were the only subjects he liked, but at his secondary school he was consigned to the factory fodder D stream. It was in this surprising environment that he conceived the idea of being a writer. His only experience of factory work caused him to fail to obtain a printing apprenticeship, so his mother suggested he trained to be a women's hairdresser, he worked as a woman's hairdresser for five years eventually running his own salon. After this he was seeking a career that would give him a greater opportunity to write, he decided to become a student, having now passed O Level English at night class. No Local Education Authority would give him a bursary, so he spent some time girder cleaning at Fords in order to fund his college O and A level studies. In 1970 he trained as a teacher.  “Educating Rita” is one of the books he has written.

“Educating Rita” is a play about a woman called Rita who goes to the Open University to get an education.  The play is mainly based on her meetings with Frank, her tutor.  This play has many issues involved; one of which is the theme of being trapped.  I ill explore it though the characters, themes and dramatic techniques used.

There are tow main characters in this play. There is Rita who is a working class woman who is married to a man called Denny.  She works in a hairdressing salon.  Rita wants to change her life so she goes to the Open University to get a better education.  This is where she meets Frank, a middle class professor.  He is also like Rita, unhappy with his life in general and he feels unfulfilled.

The similarities that these two characters have are their general unhappiness of life in general.  Rita feels as if she can, “sing a better song” this means that she feels that she can do much more with her life rather than spending the rest of her life working in the hairdressing salon.  Frank is similar because he feels that he does not want to teach as a professor and maybe he just wants a simple life without anything to worry about.  Both Frank and Rita feel trapped, however Rita feels more trapped in her surroundings.

Join now!

In this play we can sympathise with both characters, most of the sympathy lies with Rita because I feel that she has more problems to deal with than Frank.  Some of Rita’s problems that we can sympathise with stem from pressures she has to deal with from her family including Denny.  In the film version of the play there is a scene where Rita is at her sister’s wedding reception.  She and Denny are dancing when he comes out with an ultimatum that either she has a baby with him or he leaves her.  The audience feels sympathy for ...

This is a preview of the whole essay