Educating Rita

Educating Rita Educating Rita

By Armstrong Chikava

Educating Rita written Willy Russel is a great play with a good dialogue. The play focuses on only two characters, Rita and her teacher Frank. Personally I like Rita’s personality even though I couldn’t really relate to her at all. Rita is portrayed as a working class woman but she wants to change herself and her class, it appears that she isn’t satisfied with who she is. During the play, she tries to break away from her social class. Throughout the play it’s pretty evident that Rita that Rita wants to be like Frank as he seems to have his life in order but it turns out that he has his problems too. I think most people would relate to that, therefore they would be more engaged into the play and perhaps it would make them reflect upon their own lives. I guess it’s safe to say that for the most part of the play, she is in between being unhappy with her lower class identity and being lost.

Rita’s character is highlighted through mainly her dialogue as you would assume since it’s a play. The whole play takes place in Frank’s office but you can learn about Rita’s background through her conversations with Frank. Rita swears a few times throughout the play and maybe this reflects on her background, her relationship with Danny, in most people’s opinions it’s not very feminine nor is it classy. ‘I should have a baby by now, everyone expects it” this says quite a bit about her character, she seems to have a sheep-like mentality. At the start of the play she sounds like she doesn’t know what she wants, she just conforms to what everyone else is doing and does whatever is said to be expected of her by society. The readers can see that Russell comments on society, leading me to think that he is almost like Rita or at least shares some of her views. She has little education, works as a hairdresser and takes an opportunity in changing herself through education. She has a boyfriend named Danny who is a part the reason she feels like she needs to have a baby by her age but as the play goes on, she becomes smarter and starts figuring out her wants and she also changes her personality.

“God, what’s it like to be free?”, Rita has a preconceived idea of what it is like to be educated, she thinks that these people are “free” and happy but later on Frank proves her otherwise. In my views she changes what the audience would the think the theme would be through her femineity. She is very fussy and as you would expect, she gets what she wants. ‘’You’re my tutor….you’re going bleedin’ well teach me’’. Frank tries to push her away, but she refuses. As a woman most of the audience would have thought she would give in but she dint. She put her foot down without losing her femineity. I think this is the good quality about her that makes her more likeable, she is persistent and independent. Even with these qualities, she isn’t happy with herself. ‘’Take a pencil and scratches out the initial ‘`s`’’ she wants to get rid of her old self and perhaps start over. She chose her name after a famous author, thinking that would help her feel better about herself I guess but I think deep down she knew it wouldn’t work.
Change is an important part of this play. I feel like I relate to Rita on her opinion of society and how she feels the need to change it, I share the same views. For me, I just didn’t like how she changed her whole persona. I like her courage and persistence but the languages she uses kind of makes me envision a different image of her. ‘’Y’ don’t mind me swearing do y’?’’ it makes her come off as a bit trashy but I guess it who she is and it goes with her background. People judge her for that, perhaps that’s one of the reasons why she wanted to change. The slang she uses would come from a working class society, it would also be because she doesn’t read too many books. That’s why as the play progresses, she starts changing how she talks and she stops swearing, this would be after she returns from the summer camp. The aspects of her character that made me dislike here were in the second act, although she is more open minded she wants Frank to change. That’s a good thing but in my opinion it would have been better for her to treat him the way he treated her, through patience and letting him learn and change when he feels its right. But on the bright side, she started showing more progress socially, making friends with other students which she used to be scared to talk to at the start, this drew me into her a bit more I guess because it shows progress and displays that everyone has the ability to change if they try hard enough. In the end I guess the audience can clearly see that the main theme of the play is change. Rita started off uninterested in literature and as time went on she became more engaged into it and her life also changed. She wasn’t the only one who changed though, Frank use to smoke and drink alcohol regularly and at the end he still smoked a bit but he also started writing poetry again. The play has an emotional message and it’s very strong, if you work hard enough to change then you can do it if you put your efforts towards that. Still that doesn’t mean everyone will change for the better or when you change people will like who you have become. Sometimes change doesn’t last for long but Rita seems to have, she stopped her bad habits and went from a hair dresser to an educated woman. I think Russell used his own life experiences to keep the audience engaged to the paly. Obviously it would be better live or on screen but it’s still a good play none the less. We can all relate to the themes and the play in one way or another which is good.