The purpose of the Open University is to be open to people, places, methods and ideas and to provide an easy learning environment that is provided to you in your own time. This means that the OU is open to people of all classes and their views on education and how to go about it. During the 1970’s opportunities for women were rapidly increasing. In 1971 the Open University was opened and made it a lot easier for women to find an education no matter their background. There were also several acts founded to provide more choice for women,
Frank’s office is the main setting of the play and although it doesn’t provide a broad choice of what happens within the setting, Russell manages to produce a new set of actions every scene. Frank’s office is very different to what Rita normally sees. It is a very middle class office, bookcases, a desk and very decorative furniture. Rita is not used to this as in her working class world she is used to a very working class place, like the hairdressers for an example. Rita would maybe feel uncomfortable in this environment but she grows accustomed to the place and soon becomes comfortable. This is shown by the fact that as soon as she walks into Frank’s office for the very first time she says ‘It’s that stupid bleedin’ handle on the door. You wanna get it fixed!’ which shows that she is really confident and not uncomfortable at all.
In Act 1 Scene 4 Frank is concerned with Rita’s one sentence answer of an essay question. The scene then moves on to discuss the meaning of culture and the supposed lack of it within the working class. Rita then shows that she doesn’t like the working class culture and wants to move away from it by ranting about the fact that the working class culture just works against itself. This perhaps shows her motivation for moving away from the class traps set by society and shows just how selfish some societies can be. This is shown by the fact that Rita’s husband Denny refuses to accept the fact that Rita wants to get herself an education and so she has to do all of her educational work at her normal workplace, the hairdressers, where she has a lot of things to distract her. This also shows that her husband does not support her and her decision which also reflects back on the difficulty of pursuing an education and evading the working class trap. In this scene the conflict between home and her education becomes more apparent and the problems behind this are presented to the reader. Rita does not have enough support from her family and this perhaps affects the way she goes about her work. Denny believes that Rita becoming educated is pulling her away from him and her family and this is ironic as by not supporting her in her pursuit of education, he is creating an even bigger gap between himself and her. In this scene it is also shown that Rita is making good progress towards becoming a well educated woman as she discusses Peer Gynt’s search for the meaning of life with one of her customers. This shows that she is becoming a woman who can have a very educated conversation about a very moral and sophisticated subject. Rita also adds the fact that the feeling of wanting to find the meaning of life is common to the working class people who seem to have lost their working class “culture”. Rita believes the working class have lost their culture as all she sees is ‘everyone pissed, or on the Valium, tryin’ to get from one day to the next’ and this makes her hate the way the working class works.
The message of this play is that class traps in society are very dangerous things and are very hard to avoid. When a person rarely travels down the path to change their choices and options, they find it extremely difficult as expectancies are very hard to meet. People get stuck in the confines of their class and find it extremely hard to even set off onto the path of changing let alone get to the end of that path. Class distinction plays a big part in this play as expectancies for Rita are very working class whereas she wishes to change and find herself new options in life and give herself the chance to make her own choices. The classes are not necessarily better than one another but simply different. The working class and middle class both have their own culture and while one may not be better than the other, the middle class offers greater opportunities. This class difference theme does link to today, the class trap does still exist today however much it may not be apparent. People need to take every opportunity they get as once that opportunity is gone, it is incredibly hard to regain it and sometimes impossible. The class divisions in society say a lot about the way some people are very selfish in modern day society. In order for people to change where their lives are headed they need support and with the class divisions in place and expectancies to meet that support is sometimes hard to get.
