Culture in Willy Russell's Educating Rita

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Over the last few weeks I have been reading a play by an author called Willy Russell, it is called Educating Rita. The play begins by introducing the two main characters, Frank and Rita. Rita is a young woman in her mid twenty?s, living in a working class culture. Rita is not happy with the way her life is going, she wants to be seen as more middle class, so she decided to take a course at the Open University to study litterateur. Frank on the other hand is Rita?s tutor at the university also middle aged alcoholic living in a middle class culture. Frank is unhappy with the way things are going in his life, his wife has left him due to an argument over poetry and he is now living with a younger tutor named Julia. The play unfolds as Frank and Rita?s cultures clash together. Educating Rita was first performed in the 1980s. This was a particularly strange time for people in Britain because there was a great deal of civil unrest, this meant the people were not happy with the way the government was running the country. There was also a mining strike and unemployment was very hi...

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