Education Rita

Educating Rita is a play written by Willy Russell in 1982 and set in the 1980's. There are two main characters, Rita, a working class young woman who wants to get an education, and Frank, a middle classed alcoholic college teacher. Russell introduces the main themes of the play which are class/culture, education and knowledge. He does this through symbols, language, settings, and history. I am going to talk about how he develops each theme and evaluate it at the end.

As we find out in the first scene, Frank is Rita's teacher and culture clashing is made obvious. This happens to be one of the themes, class/culture. There is a big difference between Frank and Rita when it comes to class and culture. While Frank is a middle classed teacher, Rita on the other hand is only a working class hairdresser who lives with her boyfriend and her family's only expectation for her is to have a child. But Rita wants to make something of her life, we see this in a conversation between her and Frank, Rita says, "I'll have to learn about it all won' I? It's like y' sit there, don' ya, watchin' the ballet or the opera on the telly an' - an' y' call it rubbish cos that's what it looks like? Cos y' don't understand. So y' switch it off an' say, that's fuckin' rubbish". Then Frank asks, "Do you?" Rita replies "I do. But i don't want to. I wanna see..". Rita comes from a completely different angle of life compared to Frank, and Rita is intrigued by Frank's lifestyle and vice versa with Frank.

Another theme in the play is education. Clearly Rita is at a completely opposite end of the scale when it comes to education then Frank. Yet Rita is quite clever, she just doesn't know how to present this and needs guidance from Frank, "Oh it means getting the rhyme wrong.." This shows that she can pick up quickly and has good understanding but needs to ellaborate more on her explanations. Frank may have had a good education but Rita seems to have a greater understanding and respect for life, one example is in this conversation, 'Rita says "..I love that window, do you like it?", Frank replies, "...I don't often consider it actually. I sometimes get an urge to throw something through it". This shows that Rita obviously is amazed by life itself and has alot more care for it then Frank does.

Knowledge is also a theme in the book. Frank has a much deeper awareness in english history while Rita has little and tends to discuss things that she see's or hears through media. For example, Rita says to Frank, "..Elliot Ness - Y' know, the famous Chicago copper who caught Al Capone." Frank replies, "Ah when you said Elliot. I assumed you meant T.S Elliot." This shows their erudition ranges, Franks is clearly alot wider.

Class/culture, education and knowledge are the main themes in the book and exploit the major differences in society.