Educating Rita essay

Educating Rita essay

"I've been realizing for ages that I was you know slightly out of

step, I'm twenty six, I should have had a baby by now, everyone

expects it, I'm sure me husband thinks I'm sterile. He was moaning all

the time you know come off the pills, lets have a baby. I told him I'd

come off the pills, just to shut him up. But I'm still on it, see I

don't want to baby yet. See, I want to discover myself first, do you

understand that?

Changes take place in every one through our lives everyday; In this

essay I will be exploring the changes that have happened in Franks and

Rita relationship in the play Educating Rita by Willy Russell. I will

be mainly focusing upon the attitudes of the two main characters

towards each other and towards themselves.

Rita is a mature woman seeking an education, as she didn't take the

opportunity to learn when she was an amateur student because of the

environment she lived around in and the fact she didn't want to learn

because of her popularity and her working class culture.

Frank: Rita why didn't you become what you call a proper student?

Rita: you know, boring, ripped-up books, broken glass everywhere,

knives and fights and that was just in the staffroom. Nah, they tried

their best I suppose, but studying was just for the whimps, wasn't it?

See, if I'd started taking school seriously I would have had to become

different from me mates and that's not allowed.

In reflected, Rita has come to realise how the law expectations

surrounding her and her working class culture held her back from her

real potential. She wants to change now and break this cycle. Frank,

the other main character, is a teacher at the university where she has

applied to do her course. He is around his 50's and is Rita's tutor.

He is a lazy man, bored and frustrated by his life he too does not

feel like he belongs anywhere. Frank does not like his job very much;

he does not have any respect for himself at all. FRANK: my dear I

actually an appalling teacher, most of the time, you see, you see it

most of the time, you see it doesn't matter appalling teaching is

quite in order for most of the appalling students. And the others

manage to get by despite me. They expect us to teach when the pubs are

open. The relation ship between frank and Rita at the beginning of the

play is not strong, frank doesn't really want to tutor Rita because he