The Ways in Which Education has Changed Rita

The Ways in Which Education has Changed Rita

When we first meet Rita in the play she is a hairdresser and is fed up

with it. At nights her and her partner Denny go out to the local pub

for drinks and songs with all their friends, she has no children even

though she is being pressured by Denny to have them. Rita then

realises the futility of what she has become and where it is going to

take her if she carries on this way. So she decides to get and

education. She applies to the Open University and get in and Franks is

her tutor. Frank and Rita have much in common and we can see this from

their first meeting. We find out the first time they meet that they

both have partners and eventually they both break up with their

partners. They both get along well with each other from the very

start.

Frank- ' You are?' questioning as to her name.

Rita- ' What am I?'

This is then repeated and Frank is left confused, and Rita continues

to make herself at home. Questions everything about Frank and his

office. Another way of looking at this quotation is by seeing that

Rita doesn't know herself who she and it is 'education' that helps

Rita see who she really is by the end of the play. Frank and Rita's

lives are connected by the fact they both smoke, drink and have

partners at the beginning of the play and not at the end. It is again

upon Frank and Rita' first meeting we see Rita' keenness to become and

educated woman in the quotation.

Frank- ' What do you want to know?'

Rita- ' Everything!'

This is of course an ideological fixation of Rita, and is obviously

preposterous, as no one could no everything. We do also however see

all the obstacles in the way of Rita becoming 'an educated woman

friend of mine' (as Frank refers to her at the end of the book). One

of Rita' biggest problems in front of her is that her partner Denny