educating Rita study notes

Educating Rita
Setting
The play takes place entirely in Frank’s office at a university in the North of England.
The Playwright
“I wanted to make a play which engaged and was relevant to those who considered themselves uneducated, those whose daily language is not the language of the university or the theatre. I wanted to write a play which would attract, and be as valid for the Ritas in the audience as well as the Franks.”
Literary Elements
Characters
Frank – Frank is a middle aged, middle-class English professor who has taken on the extra job of tutoring an Open-University student. He claims that this is to help pay for the copious amounts of alcohol he drinks throughout the play. He is disillusioned with the university environment. He identifies closely with academia and cannot imagine leaving. He claims he is a terrible teacher and is a poet who hasn’t written anything in years.
Frank’s central conflict is that he can offer Rita the knowledge and skills she wishes to gain in her quest to change her circumstances and transcend her class origins: however, to do this he believes he will destroy the very characteristics that make Rita such a breath of fresh air. Rita represents to him the very opposite of his own mundane, predictable and safe life.
He deteriorates as she flourishes. He becomes emotionally dependant on her just as she is, initially, intellectually dependant on him; his dependence on her reflects his need to feel useful and influential when his guidance is no longer needed and Rita ventures out on her own, Frank is cut loose and his drinking spirals out of control.
Frank is trapped by his class and circumstances and addiction, in some ways, as much as Rita is limited by her circumstances. In the final scenes of the play, as Frank prepares for his trip away from the university, we can imagine that he is about to embark on his own journey of self discovery and learning and it is Rita’s haircut that symbolically cuts him lose and prepares him for what is to come.

Rita (Susan) - Rita is a young working class hairdresser in her 20’s. She applies to study with the Open University. Rita’s real name is Susan, but at the opening of the play she introduces herself to Frank as Rita, a name she associates with a somewhat radical popular American author, Rita Mae Brown. This re-naming, along with some of her early comments to Frank, show us that she is painfully uninformed and passionately hungry for knowledge, and eager to reinvent herself. She can feels this will give her access to a world where she will be able to find greater meaning in her life.

She’s married and wants to “find herself” before beginning to have children, but her quest for knowledge is also a yearning for transformation and meaning. She hides her insecurity and her ignorance behind a brash façade of bravado.

Eventually Rita (who goes back to being Susan with everyone but Frank) becomes successful within the world of academia. She separates from her husband, quits her job as a hair-dresser, tries to change her accent and makes friends with some of the students on campus. She feels her transformation is complete – and because she associates Frank with her rough beginnings, she distances herself from him, and largely comes to conform to a somewhat stereotypical version of an academic intellectual.

In the end, after Frank nearly drinks himself out of his University job, Rita returns, having found a balance between the brash, naïve person she was and the intellectual she wished to become.

Into the world link

An exploration through a variety of texts that deal with ‘aspects of growing up and transitions into new phases of an individual’s life’.

You should talk about the transition from one world to another, using Educating Rita and other text to demonstrate your points.

Good responses will focus on the transition and the techniques used by the authors/composers to create meaning and image for the audience/responder.

The play focuses on empowerment through education.

Rita moves from an ‘uneducated’ working class life to a tertiary educated life.
It is this transition with its positives and negatives that is to be focuses upon.

Plot Structure

Act I

Act one introduces us to Rita and Frank and the rhythm of their relationship. Every scene takes place in Frank’s study. Most scenes begin with Frank working or drinking in his office, and Rita barging in. It is clear that she is a breath of fresh air in his life which seems predictable and staid.

The power dynamic between the two characters in the first act remains steady. Frank possesses the stability and balance that Rita needs to be successful in her aim to get an education. Rita, full of energy and enthusiasm, lacks focus and discipline. She continuously veers off topic, more interested in expounding on her working class environment and quizzing him about his drinking and personal life than in really focusing on the texts he presents her with.

At the end of the act the conflict comes to a head when Rita’s husband tells her to quit studying. She leaves her husband instead, and at this point makes the decision to apply herself fully to the academic world.

Act II

The opening scenes of this act are short and to the point. It is immediately evident that Rita’s determination is paying off. She is successful in her attempts to turn herself into an academic. Ironically, the more successful she is in this world, the less powerful Frank becomes. He is aware that he is going to become less relevant to her as time goes by, but this process is obviously painful for him.

This culminates in scene three, when we find Rita in the office and Frank barges in the door drunk. We learn that Frank has been asked to leave the college.

While he has had an influence on her, she has also had an influence on him. Frank and Rita have reversed roles. Frank is obviously devastated by this and the climactic moments of the play come at the point where Rita rejects Frank because she feels he is holding her to a previous version of herself.

In the end, Rita comes to reconcile her newfound knowledge with a clearer sense of the world. Frank has been asked to leave the university, a change which we (perhaps vainly) hope will be good for him. Rita comes to tell him that what he has given her is choice: choice in what to do with her life, choice in how to see the world.

Into the world

Educating Rita is in two acts. There is a shift between the happenings of act 1 and those of act 2. Rita has changed so much. She has moved into her new world and we measure how successful and fruitful the transition has been.

Educating Rita has only two characters in the one room. The changes in setting within the room are quite evident and purposeful. The changes in the characters are equally as important and observable.

Q1. Why does Rita want to go to university?

Q2. What change occurs at the end of the first act of the play?

Q3. Is Frank pleased about how successful Rita is, throughout Act Two, in her academic endeavours? Why or why not?

Q4. How is Frank changed by his interactions with Rita? How is she changed by him?

Themes

The Limitations of Class

Educating Rita was written in the 1980’s in Britain, at a time when many traditional working class occupations were disappearing. Rita’s opinion is that the working class, from which she comes, has lost some of its place at the heart of British society.

Rita says that now that everyone has access to housing and other necessities that people have lost their purpose. Rita implies that when a class, which was defined by its work, no longer has work, that a vacuum is created. She claims that the space which was once filled with work is now filled by consumerism and empty pursuits. When her mother says “we should be singing better songs than these,” she is implying that they should be finding more meaning in their lives.

Frank’s class origins are more obscure, but what is clear is that in the present of the play he is firmly a member of the middle class. His own critique of middle class, academic culture are as damning as Rita’s of her own culture, but for the most part they read as a critique of academia as much as the middle class. It is clear that from Rita’s perspective the trappings of middle class culture are desirable.

It is clear that in some ways Frank is as trapped by his class and environment as Rita is. Rita talks about a degree of conformity in the people she grew up with which limits people’s ability to transcend their origins, but this can be applied to all levels of society. In Rita’s case, she is expected not to pursue her education, but to get married and have children. She worries that any rejection of this class-based destiny would be hurtful to those around her. She talks about people being proud of their class, but implies that the pride is based on an outmoded way of looking at the world. Rita mostly laments that she is not being given the opportunity to explore her own identity within the class culture that she lives in.

Q5. What differences are there between Frank and Rita in terms of class?

Language

Language, particularly swearing, and accents are important but subtle elements in the play.

Accent

In Britain, accents are often an indication of class as well as region. Rita clearly has a working class accent. At the beginning of the play her language is littered with regionally specific phrases which are far from formal. As the play progresses, her language becomes more formal, and her vocabulary changes when she discusses academic matters. In the second act Rita tries to lose her working class accent entirely. Frank is shocked by this denial of her true identity. When Rita begins to try to integrate her new-found education with her old way of thinking, we see her slip slowly back into a softened version of her old accent. The blending of the old and the new neatly mirrors the balance she finds at the end of the play.

Swearing

Rita claims that it is only narrow minded people who don’t see that words are just words. This is one of her first attempts at an intellectual discussion; however, it is clear that Rita’s language when she first meets Frank is entirely inappropriate.

Swearing is associated with emotion rather than intellect in both a positive and negative way. Frank, at a few key moments in the play, swears. One such moment is when he hears that Rita’s husband has asked her to leave. At this point the emotion seems largely appropriate.

Into the world

There is a great gap between Rita’s ‘working class’ vocabulary and Frank’s ‘educated class’ vocabulary. This is seen both in the spoken and written word. It is especially highlighted when Rita discusses the place of swearing and vulgarity within the classes.

Language is used to show how different the two worlds are, how far Rita must go in her transition to arrive in her new world.

Language may also give insight into the positive and negatives of this transition. Rita returns believing she is a different/better person because she can ‘talk posh’ like Trish.

Materialism

Rita believes that once, the working class was proud of its blue-collar, hard-working values; now that there isn’t enough work to go around, those values have been replaced by a materialistic culture which numbs people’s sense and keeps them from questioning what’s happening in their world or trying to get ahead in life.

Rita puts her materialistic pursuits aside while she is attempting to acquire knowledge through her course with Frank. She claims she won’t buy any more dresses until she has finished studying. She quits her job as a hairdresser, which she complained was superficial, for a job in a bistro. This new job is not so meaningful either, but it has the trappings of intellectualism, which Rita mistakenly takes for the point of her pursuit of knowledge. The height of this mistaken view is seen when she tells Frank that she now knows what clothes to wear and what wine to choose and so she no longer needs him.

In the end, Rita sees the mistake she has made. Frank presents Rita with a new dress as a symbol that he feels she has indeed become an educated woman who is unlikely to mistake material things for knowledge.

Q6. Why does Frank say to Rita, “You haven’t learnt better songs, just different ones?”

The Value of Education/ Culture and Knowledge

In general, education and its links to cultural pursuits, such as ballet and poetry and drama, are seen as positive things in the play. The big question of the play, however, is whether academic learning in some way stifles creativity.

We watch Rita yearn for knowledge so that she can find new meaning in her life. To be successful at the university, however, she needs to put her passionate responses and independent thinking behind her, and conform to a staid, predictable formula.

Frank, is trapped in the dry world of academia. It is clear he is bored and unsatisfied, but that he is too stuck in his ways to ever leave. In some ways Frank is on the opposite trajectory from Rita. To be successful, she needs to harness her originality and energy and learn how to conform. Frank, on the other hand, needs to find a way out of the dry, staid life of academia which he is allowing to stifle him.

Choice

In the end, what triumphs is the ability to choose your own path. Rita says she may go to France for Christmas or maybe she’ll stay home. She may have a baby or she may not. What Frank has given Rita is the ability to choose what direction her life is going to take.

For Frank, just knowing Rita has given him the insight that there are choices in the world. By teaching Rita to make choices, he has reminded himself of his own options.

Into the world

Is the transition into a new world a WILLING transition or is it a FORCED transition?

Space

The play is confined to the staid space of Frank’s office. The office represents the academic world to which Frank belongs. In the first scene Rita cannot get the door open to let herself in, symbolically representing how, because of her upbringing, access to the university is difficult. Later in the play she cannot get the window open to let in the fresh air, and we symbolically see how stuck in his dusty world of old ideas Frank is.

In all the scenes but one Frank is already in the office as if he is permanently ensconced in this world. In most of the scenes Rita enters the room like a whirlwind bringing with her passion and enthusiasm. The two main exceptions to this are telling. At the point at which Rita has rejected Frank as no longer useful to her on her journey, she is already in the office, symbolizing her success within the university setting. In contrast to all the other scenes, Frank is the one who cannot get through the door and when he does, he is drunk and belligerent showing his slipping grasp on things.

In the final scene we see Frank slowly packing up his books which both symbolize his learning, but also have acted as a screen behind which he hides his drinking.

Into the world

The door – symbolic of the distance between the two worlds and how difficult it may be for Rita to move into the new world. The ease at which Rita finally moves through Frank’s door allows the audience to measure Rita’s transition. Finally she stops coming at all.

The window – like the door its characteristics give insight into Rita’s transition. Initially it too is closed and little gets in or out. Finally the window is open and it accepts the outside world into the office and allows them to journey out into the world.

The bookcase (and the bottles) – Perhaps the most important symbol. It hides the truth of Rita’s transition. Is the world she so desires to go to so perfect?

Q7. What do you think the haircut at the end of the play symbolises?

Q8. Rita’s education turns her into a different person, but is she better, or worse as a result?

Into the world

Positives of transition

Discovery and enlightenment – Rita discovers a new world far removed from her ‘restrictive’ world as a wife and hairdresser.

Freedom and choice – Rita desires to be able to choose her future not have it forced upon her through her inability to have choice. To her this is the basis of her move to escape her entrapment.

Opportunity – Rita hopes that her new life will represent opportunities that her existing life has failed to deliver education, travel and culture.

Relationships – Rita meets new and interesting people. People she aspires to become, Frank, Tiger and Trish.

Negatives of transition

Disconnection with the past – Rita sacrifices the relationship with her family. Her marriage breaks down and she is left to pursue her transition alone.

Overcoming adversity – Rita must overcome setbacks, her own short comings and ability to make it into her new world. Rita’s character, Frank, Denny and Trish are examples of the casualties along the way.

The unknown (grass is always greener on the other side) – Rita desire to become a different person is at times not well thought out. Does she gain more than she risks during this transition? Does she finally get what she so desires in the end?

Q9. Write a brief essay about a teacher who has had an impact on you. Compare your experiences with Rita in the play.