YORK NOTES

Educating Rita

Willy Russell
 FT

Educating Rita

Willy Russell

Notes by Tony Rawdin

(eee ee
Longman @ York Press
YORK PRESS
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First published 1998

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 ( ONTENTS

Preface
PART ONE
]NTRODUCTION How to Study a Play
Willy Russell’s Background
Context & Setting
ParT Two
SUMMARIES General Summary
Detailed Summaries, Comment,
Glossaries & Tests
Act I, Scenes 1—4
Act I, Scenes 5-8
Act II, Scenes 1-3
Act II, Scenes 4-7
PART THREE
(COMMENTARY Themes
Structure
Characters
Language & Style
ParT FOUR
GTupy SKILLS How to Use Quotations
Essay Writing
Sample Essay Plan & Questions
PART FIVE
(CULTURAL CONNECTIONS
Broader Perspectives
Literary Terms 66
‘Test Answers 67
 Prrerace

York Notes are designed to give you a broader perspective on works of

literature studied at GCSE and equivalent levels. We have carried out
extensive research into the needs of the modern literature student prior
to publishing this new edition. Our research showed that no existing
series fully met students’ requirements. Rather than present a single
authoritative approach, we have provided alternative viewpoints,
empowering students to reach their own interpretations of the text.
York Notes provide a close examination of the work and include
biographical and historical background, summaries, glossaries, analyses
of characters, themes, structure and language, cultural connections and
literary terms.
If you look at the Contents page you will see the structure for the series.
However, there’s no need to read from the beginning to the end as you
would with a novel, play, poem or short story. Use the Notes in the way
that suits you. Our aim is to help you with your understanding of the
work, not to dictate how you should learn.
York Notes are written by English teachers and examiners, with an
expert knowledge of the subject. They show you how to succeed in
coursework and examination assignments, guiding you through the text
and offering practical advice. Questions and comments will extend, test
and reinforce your knowledge. Attractive colour design and illustrations
improve clarity and understanding, making these Notes easy to use and
handy for quick reference.
York Notes are ideal for:
© Essay writing
e Exam preparation
® Class discussion
The author of these Notes is Tony Rawdin, who currently works as
Director of Communications at a comprehensive school in County
Durham. He studied English Language and Literature at the University
of Liverpool and gained his Masters Degree from the University of
York.
The text used in these Notes is the Longman edition, 1991.

Health Warning: This study guide will enhance your understanding, but should
not replace the reading of the original text and/or study in class.
PaRT ONE

[tRopucTIon

How TO STUDY A PLAY

You have bought this book because you wanted to study

a play on your own. This may supplement classwork.
@ Drama is a special ‘kind’ of writing (the technical
term is ‘genre’) because it needs a performance in the
theatre to arrive at a full interpretation of its
meaning. When reading a play you have to imagine
how it should be performed; the words alone will not
be sufficient. Think of gestures and movements.
e Drama is always about conflict of some sort (it may
be below the surface). Identify the conflicts in the
play and you will be close to identifying the large
ideas or themes which bind all the parts together.
@ Make careful notes on themes, characters, plot and
any sub-plots of the play.
e Playwrights find non-realistic ways of allowing an
audience to see into the minds and motives of their
characters. The ‘soliloquy’, in which a character
speaks directly to the audience, is one such device.
Does the play you are studying have any such
passages?
@ Which characters do you like or dislike in the play?
Why? Do your sympathies change as you see more of
these characters?
e Think of the playwright writing the play. Why were
these particular arrangements of events, these
particular sets of characters and these particular
speeches chosen?
Studying on your own requires self-discipline and a
carefully thought-out work plan in order to be effective.
Good luck.

V
VW ILLY RUSSELL’S BACKGROUND

Willy Russell was born in 1947 in Whiston, just outside

Liverpool. His father was a factory worker, until he
gave it up to buy a fish and chip shop. His mother had
a menial job in a warehouse. The young Russell,
therefore, had the sort of upbringing which failed to
indicate any sort of literary potential, let alone suggest
a career of writing which would establish himself as
one of the most popular and successful playwrights
(see Literary Terms) of modern times.
Education At school, by his own admission, Willy Russell failed to
Notice the links excel. He did enjoy reading though, and it was during
between Willy this period of his life that he first dreamed of becoming
Russell and Rita a writer. However, believing this to be a foolish notion
who both fail to for someone of his class, he buried the thought deep
succeed at school. within himself for many years. Rather like Rita in
Educating Rita, it was only in adulthood that he could
break away from the pressure of his peers and follow his
own desire for education. .
Early After failing his Apprentice Printer’s examination,
employment Russell acted on his mother’s suggestion and became a
qualified ladies’ hairdresser, eventually running his own
small salon. He never really enjoyed this job and claims
that he was never any good at it either, but on quiet
days it did at least provide him with the opportunity to
begin writing. This led to him passing ‘O’ Level
English Literature at night school and a short spell
working at a car factory earned him enough money to
enrol full time at college. It is easy to see that there are
definite parallels between his own life and the
experiences of his fictional character, Rita.
Other works Apart from Educating Rita, which was written in 1979,
Willy Russell has written a number of other popular
and successful plays such as Breezeblock Park (1975),
One for the Road (1976), Our Day Out (1977), Stags and
Hens (1978) and Blood Brothers (1981). Perhaps his
most celebrated work, other than Educating Rita, is the

V
INTRODUCTION CONTEXT & SETTING

play Shirley Valentine (1986). Both have been adapted

for the cinema and turned into highly acclaimed films.

(CONTEXT & SETTING

The opening of Educating Rita states that the events are

set in a university somewhere ‘in the north of England’.
However, there can be little doubt that Rita’s broad
Scouse accent locates the play more specifically in
Liverpool, Willy Russell’s home town. Despite this, the
play has a distinctly universal appeal. Rita reflects, at
first glance, a working-class desire to escape from her
own culture and background, in order to lead an
apparently more fulfilling life in the type of society
represented by Frank and the other students with
whom she comes into contact.
The working Rita claims that the working class have effectively lost
class their culture and all she sees are people who are ‘pissed,
background or on the Valium, tryin’ to get from one day to the
next’. There appears to be no meaning to their lives.
When Rita fails to find the necessary self-confidence to
attend Frank’s dinner party one Saturday night, she
meets up with the rest of her family in the local pub
instead. Although everyone appears to be happy as they
Rita’s desire for all sing together, Rita senses that this is simply a thin
change 1s shared by veneer and the tears shed by her mother would appear
her mother, but to justify this. When Rita asks her mother why she is
Denny is an crying, she replies with bitter poignancy, ‘we could sing
example of a better songs than those’. Clearly, this is meant to be
working-class man taken metaphorically (see Literary Terms). Rita’s
who 1s apparently mother, just like her daughter, has a clear perception
satisfied with his that there ought to be more to life than the humdrum
lot: and rather shallow existence they are leading.
Although society has altered radically in many ways
since the time when the play was written, it could be

yA
CONTEXT & SETTING INTRODUCTION

argued that Educating Rita is now more relevant than

ever. The more divided that society becomes, the
greater the need for the impoverished people to escape.
Moreover, the play can be viewed on a purely personal
level. Here is a woman whose lack of fulfilment must be
shared by many people who sit in the audience and
witness Rita’s attempts to change herself and her
situation. She experiences problems in her marriage,
and her husband’s desire for her to have children only
throws the dilemma into sharper focus. How can Rita
have children when she knows that she is not ready for
the responsibility? She yearns for something substantial
in her life and realises that she must “discover meself
first’ before she can contemplate bringing children into
the world.

SETTING
The play is naturalistic (see Literary Terms) in the
sense that all the action takes place in Frank’s study. By
doing so, Willy Russell is taking Rita out of her world
and immersing her in Frank’s. The room itself is
significant. The fact that it is set in a Victorian-built
university suggests tradition and permanence, and even
its position on the first floor is significant as it allows
Rita literally to rise above the common mass of
humanity and look at the world from a different angle.
The rows and rows of books which dominate the stage
represent the world of knowledge to which Rita aspires
and they enable her to experience life in a variety of
forms. Although her experiences are second-hand, they
do allow Rita to change into an entirely different
person.
Academic Frank’s cultural background is entirely alien to Rita
background when she first attends the Open University course, but
she is determined to fit in with his social and academic

Vv
INTRODUCTION CONTEXT & SETTING

Note how Rita circles. In doing so, she proposes to alter her whole way
aims to escape of living. Instead of spending evenings in the pub, she
from her roots and chooses to visit the theatre. Her choice of books,
fit in with Frank's clothes and even her job is governed by a burning desire
circles, but she soon to be accepted into Frank’s world, all of which seems
finds that she is ironic (see Literary Terms) in view of the fact that
comfortable in Frank himself is certainly not happy with his own
neither lifestyle. Divorced and now struggling to maintain a
environment. relationship with Julia, one of his ex-students, his
dissatisfaction with life is reflected in his inability to
write the sort of poetry he would like and a growing
drink problem.

4
PART TWO

SUMMARIES

(;ENERAL SUMMARY
The play is about Rita’s attempt to break free from her
mundane existence as a hairdresser and enter fully and
with confidence into Frank’s academic, middle-class
world.
ActI In the opening moments of the play, we are made
aware of Frank’s drink problem. Dissatisfied with his
academic career, he has turned to the bottle to forget
his pain, and even before Rita arrives for her tutorial he
has already contemplated a visit to the pub to ‘wash
away the memory of some silly woman’s attempt to get
into the mind of Henry James’.
Note how the Rita’s first, clumsy entry reflects her social inferiority.
development of She is ill at ease and is finding it difficult to break into
language goes Frank’s world. Her strong Liverpudlian accent clearly
hand-in-hand identifies her as coming from a completely different
with the background, and her decision to change her name from
development of _ Susan to Rita reflects a desire to escape her working-
character. class roots and enter into a middle-class, academic
environment represented by Frank and his regular
students.
To Frank, Rita is like ‘the first breath of air’ that has
been in his room for years, but he feels uneasy in his
role as a night school tutor on the Open University
course and attempts to persuade Rita to change to
another tutor. However, a bond rapidly emerges
between the two characters and Rita is adamant
that Frank is going to be the one to educate her,
because he is ‘a crazy mad piss artist who wants to
throw his students through the window, an’ I like
you’.,

10 YY
SUMMARIES GENERAL SUMMARY

Rita’s marriage In trying to escape from one world and enter into
breaks down as a another, Rita finds that many conflicts emerge.
result ofher Her husband’s lack of support means that she has
education, but to write her essays in quiet moments at work
what would have (hardly ideal conditions for study!). This conflict
happened if deepens when Denny burns her books, on finding
Denny had out that Rita had been taking the contraceptive pill
supported her? against his wishes. The relationship cannot sustain
such conflict and, eventually, the marriage breaks
down.

Throughout the first half of the play, Rita looks upon

herself as a ‘half-caste’, neither feeling comfortable in
her own world, nor possessing the confidence to mix in
the social circles inhabited by Frank when he invites her
to dinner at his home.
The first half of the play ends with Rita coming to a
crossroads in her development. She could choose to
turn the clock back and return to her former way of life,
but she decides against this. Instead, she determines to
press on with her education and, with renewed vigour,
she is able to channel all her energy into the learning
process.
Act I As Act II gets under way, we almost immediately detect
a change in the relationship between Frank and Rita.
Following her success at summer school, she is
brimming with confidence and she has found another
sort of teacher in Trish, her new flatmate: ‘She’s dead
classy. Y’ know like, she’s got taste, y’ know like you,
Frank, she’s just got it.’
With her greater sense of comfort in this middle-class
world, we witness Rita beginning to take control of her
relationship with Frank. She takes the lead when
suggesting that they should study ‘a dead good poet’,
and tries to persuade Frank to have the tutorial outside
on the grass.

TF 11
GENERAL SUMMARY SUMMARIES

Consider the way We now become more aware of Frank’s own

Rita’s strength weaknesses. His drinking is taking such a hold upon his
comes at the life that Rita is forced to warn him that ‘Tt’'ll kill y,
expense ofFrank's Frank’. His marriage has already broken down and
security. his relationship with Julia seems to be under threat.
At the centre of all this is Frank’s inability to write
the sort of poetry that he would like. A sense of failure
and frustration spills over into his teaching and,
possibly to escape the consequences, he turns to the
whisky bottle for comfort. As Rita searches for her true
self, it seems that Frank is losing his own sense of
identity.
The more confident Rita becomes, the less she needs
Frank. Conversely, we see that, as the play develops,
Frank becomes more absorbed by Rita’s character.
Rather ironically (see Literary Terms), it is he who
needs Rita’s company and not the other way round. He
becomes distinctly uneasy about the way Rita’s
character is changing and, to some extent, he is given
good reason. Rita’s attempt to speak ‘properly’ appears
ludicrous and yet this has to be taken in the context of
her trying to ‘find’ herself.
Think about the In the later scenes of the play, we witness their
ways in which relationship breaking down. Rita is late for a tutorial
Frank makes and when Frank rings her at work, he finds that she has
matters worse left the hairdressing salon to work in a bistro. Frank is
between himself hurt that Rita has not confided in him, but Rita simply
ana Rita. brushes it aside as not being of any consequence. The
conflict between Rita and Denny in Act I is giving way
to a conflict between Rita and Frank in Act II. We see
Frank, in a state of inebriation, sending Rita away to
write a critical appraisal of his own poetry, and this
leads to the climax of their conflict when she returns
with her views the following day. Frank is scathing
about Rita’s lack of real learning, stating that her
positive response to the poems is borne out of her

12 V
SUMMARIES AcT I

pseudo-intellectual approach to the course, and that

there is nothing personal in her analysis.
Between Scene 5 and Scene 6, there is evidently a time
lapse. After a period of time, when Rita and Frank have
not seen each other, Frank tries to make amends by
ringing her to tell her about the impending
examination. Another time lapse occurs just before the
final scene when Rita comes to thank Frank for being a
good teacher. Having passed her examination, she has
the opportunity to choose her own direction in life, and
Frank even asks her to accompany him to Australia,
following his banishment by the university authorities.
The play ends on a lighter note with Rita preparing to
give Frank a haircut. The audience is aware of the
sexual undertones when Rita tells Frank ‘I never
thought there was anythin’ I could give you. But
| there is. Come here, Frank ...’, but Willy Russell
undercuts this with the final line, ‘I’m gonna take ten
years off you ...’.

[DETAILED SUMMARIES

ACT ]

SCENE 1 The opening scene, as for the entire play, is set in a

first-floor room of a Victorian-built university in the
north of England.
When the curtain rises, we see Frank, who is in his
early fifties, busily searching along rows of bookshelves
to find a hidden bottle of whisky. Now a rather
disenchanted English lecturer, he has no enthusiasm for
the Open University course on which Rita has enrolled.
Rita’s first entry is a clumsy affair, rattling at the door
knob and unable to get in. However, there is an air of

V 13
ActTI SUMMARIES

Consider Willy determination about her which Frank finds impossible

Russells use of to ignore. She is like a ‘breath of air’, different to all the
entrances for comic other students, and it is this freshness which is so
effect. appealing.
Note Rita’s coarse When talking about the picture of a nude religious
and vulgar scene hanging on Frank’s wall, Rita asks her tutor
language. whether or not he thinks of it as erotic. On hearing
Frank’s reply, ‘I suppose it is’, Rita’s reaction is to state,
‘There’s no suppose about it. Look at those tits’. This is
typical of Rita and Frank’s conversation as they get
acquainted.
Here again is Their subjects of conversation quickly change, Rita
another mismatch offering Frank a cigarette and talking about people
between Rita and being afraid of death, which then reminds her of a
the academic poem on the same topic. Frank immediately assumes
world she is that Rita is speaking of the celebrated Welsh poet,
entering. Dylan Thomas, only to be told that she is, in fact
referring to a poem by the contemporary Liverpool
writer, Roger McGough. Not surprisingly, Frank
has to admit, ‘I don’t think Iknow the actual piece you
mean...
We learn that Rita’s real name is Susan and that she
is calling herself by this new name after Rita Mae
Brown, the authoress of her favourite novel entitled
Rubyfruit Jungle. Frank is clearly not impressed by such
writing.
They then talk about E.M. Forster, the educated class
life in comparison to Rita’s, Yeats and Rita’s learning.
Rita talks about life at the hairdressers, herself and how
at twenty-six, she feels ‘out of step’; while everyone else
is expecting her to settle down and have children in the
near future, Rita wants to discover herself first.
Partly fearful of taking on such a burdensome
responsibility and partly because of the course’s unsocial
hours that limit his drinking time, Frank encourages

14 V
SUMMARIES AcTI

Rita to change tutors. Initially, she exits only to return

moments later with the command, ‘you are my teacher
— an’ you're gonna bleedin’ well teach me’. And if Frank
was left in any doubt as to what he was taking on with
his new student, he could not fail to realise it when Rita
closes the scene with her assertion that she will cut his
hair at the next meeting.
Note the stage directions (see Literary Terms) which
(COMMENT describes the scene. Be aware of these as you are
reading the play.
The first scene opens up Rita’s character, enabling the
audience to see why she has been driven to join the
course.
Rita is attempting to create a new identity for herself.
She is searching for a new meaning in her life and
Frank is that means to an end. This lack of education
but clear desire to learn is revealed in many ways in this
scene, for instance when Rita asks Frank what
assonance (see Literary Terms) means. Education is a
way for Rita to escape from her working-class
surroundings.
At this stage of Rita’s development, we see that she is
Rita’s perceptions desperate to find herself but does not know where to
of quality begin. She obviously feels that the change of name is
literature are not important and yet casual observers would recognise that
the same as this is entirely superficial.
Frank's.
It is the mismatch between Rita’s language and the
academic setting (see Literary Terms) that is the source
of much humour in the play. Her accent and dialect
(see Literary Terms) clearly sets her apart and so too
does the constant swearing and joking. However,
sometimes it is her lack of knowledge that marks the
difference: “Do you know Yeats?’ says Frank. “The wine
lodge?’ comes the reply.

Y 15
AcTI SUMMARIES

It is interesting to note that since the play was written,

Roger McGough has continued to receive wide critical
acclaim. Frank is dismissive of this poet and, ironically
(see Literary Terms), it takes Rita to indicate his true
ability. Significantly, by the end of the play, the
audience has become all too aware that Frank is having
problems writing his own poetry and that he would give
anything to be able to write as freely as McGough.
Look closely at Frank’s own lack of confidence is highlighted in his
who 1s in control attempt to persuade Rita to find another tutor.
here, and consider Although he maintains that the reason for this is
ifthis situation because the evening course interferes with his drinking,
changes throughout one suspects that Frank is frightened of the challenge
the play. which faces him. Unlike most of his other students who
could, by and large, get along without him, Rita is
totally reliant on Frank for her education.
Rita is already beginning to find her feet to some
extent. At the end of the scene Rita calls Frank a
‘geriatric hippie’, reflecting the confidence and
security she feels in his company. Although it takes
much longer for her to mix effectively with his
regular students, the fact that Rita strikes up an
immediate rapport with Frank is significant if she is to
develop.

GLOSSARY Yates Wine Lodge Rita confuses Yeats with Yates, a chain of
wine bars
Yeats William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) an Irish poet — note
that this play has many references to literary figures and
works, as Rita is being educated. For further information look
them up in any good literature encyclopedia
Rita Mae Brown an American author who wrote a sexually
explicit novel Rubyfruit Jungle
geriatric hippie the hippies of the 1960s rejected traditional
values and grew their hair long. So Frank’s wild hairstyle
makes him look like an ageing hippie

16 v
SUMMARIES AcT I

SCENE i) Rita’s second entrance involves Frank, along with the

audience, witnessing the door handle being turned and
turned again, but no one entering. When Frank finally
opens the door, he reveals Rita, oil can in hand, trying
to fix the faulty handle. She announces that she is doing
it because she knows he will not.
Note that Rita Once inside, Rita walks round Frank’s room looking at
moves restlessly various objects, admiring her tutor’s taste. When she
about the room, looks out of the window at the lawns, she asks Frank
trying to whether the ‘proper’ students sit down there to study,
familiarise herself clearly distinguishing herself as not a ‘proper’ student.
with the Rita describes how, as a child, she had a yearning
surroundings. to attend boarding school because of her vision of
‘tuck-shop’, ‘matron’ and ‘prep’. She describes her
dissatisfaction with her own schooling: ‘borin’, ripped-
up books, broken glass everywhere, knives an’ fights.’
Although she jokes, ‘An’ that was just the staffroom’,
the audience senses that there is a serious issue
underlying all this cheerful banter. Rita explains that
although the teachers tried their best, she was unable to
commit herself to her education because there was no
academic atmosphere. Studying was for the ‘whimps’, as
she puts it, and for her to take school seriously she
would have hadto become different to her friends.
She now considers that it was this need for conformity
that led to a rather shallow existence: music, clothes
and ‘lookin’ for a feller’ seemed to be the sum total of
her experience. Rita comments that buying a new dress
to change the external appearance can deflect you from
the need to change yourself on the inside. Now, as a
symbolic (see Literary Terms) gesture, Rita is wearing
an old dress and is refusing to buy another until she
passes her first exam. By then, she hopes to have
become an entirely new person and will be able to buy
the ‘sort of dress you’d only see on an educated woman’.
The tutorial itself revolves around the E.M. Forster

V 17
AcTI SUMMARIES

novel Howards End, which Rita had taken to read on

her first visit. As with her appreciation of Rubyfruit
Jungle, Rita responds to the text in a purely subjective
manner, and it is Frank’s task to develop in Rita a sense
of critical detachment that will enable her to pass the
examination.
Frank talks of Rita disciplining her mind and we see
how she is unable to concentrate on the real business of
the tutorial, choosing to probe into Frank’s personal life
instead. Here, we learn of Frank’s marriage break up
and his new life with Julia, his early volumes of poetry
and his recent inability to write.
There 1s clearly a Both characters open their souls and there is tension in
strong attraction the line, ‘Rita — why didn’t you walk in here twenty
and closeness years ago?’ but Rita extricates herself from an
between Frank uncomfortable situation with the humorous retort, ‘Cos
and Rita, but I don’t think they would have accepted me at the age of
Rita does her best six. The scene ends with Frank trying once again to
to play it down. focus Rita’s attention on the Forster novel.
(ComMENT Rita sees herself as inferior to the ‘proper’ students but
aspires to be like them. This shows her lack of
confidence in the new environment, and also has much
to do with her simply not understanding the realities of
university education. As with her change of name, we
recognise that in searching for her identity, she is
simply moving further away from her true self. Her use
of language is a barrier, the strong accent and dialect
(see Literary Terms) clearly pitching her in the working
class and setting her apart from the rest of the students.
This, in turn, leads to a certain lack of confidence on
Rita’s part; something which she is only able to
overcome in the second half of the play.
Willy Russell begins to develop the theme (see Literary
Terms) of education through Rita’s story of her
schooldays, and the idea is picked up later when she

18 Y
SUMMARIES AcT I

As Educating relates how she once saw a beautiful bird as a child but
Rita develops, it refrained from telling the teacher because she knew that
becomes apparent the teacher would ‘Make us write an essay on it’. Frank
that both acknowledges this, and the analogy (see Literary
characters are Terms) with the bird is related to Rita’s own situation.
learning from each He knows that for Rita to pass an examination in
other. English Literature she must do more than simply
admire the beauty of great works; she must also analyse
them and communicate her ideas in writing.
Willy Russell’s use of humour becomes more
pronounced in this scene as the two characters begin to
feed off each other. Rita’s rather coarse and vulgar
humour is countered by Frank’s dry wit and the two
contrasting styles work well together.

GLOSSARY patina used here, it refers to Frank’s room where the untidiness
reflects his character
Tracy Austin a young American tennis star who shot to
prominence in the 1980s
F.R. Leavis a popular twentieth-century literary critic
Marxist viewpoint Marxists analyse literature by looking at texts
in the context of events occurring in society at the time of
writing, just as Rita does with Howards End

SCENE 3 Rita is struggling to come to terms with E.M. Forster’s

novel Howards End. She pronounces, “This Forster,
honest to God he doesn’t half get on my tits’ to which
Frank replies, ‘Good. You must show me the evidence’.
This quick-witted reply reflects the closeness that is
developing in their relationship.
When Frank asks Rita to compare Howards End to two
other novels she has read that week, her reply depicts
the difficulties she is finding in the traditional learning
process.
Rita’s essay on Forster refers almost entirely to the
popular novelist Harold Robbins, and Frank is

V 19
AcT I SUMMARIES

unimpressed. He stresses the need for her to develop

taste in literature for, if she fails to appreciate anything
other than pulp fiction, she will never be prepared for
the examination. The final part of the scene suggests
that Rita is finally getting the message when she
admits ‘My mind’s full of junk’ and ‘It needs a good
clearin’ out’.
(COMMENT Willy Russell said that this scene could be omitted
when performing the play because it is not strictly
essential in terms of the development of the plot
(see Literary Terms). It is worth considering, however,
what the play would lose by its omission.
Frank’s attitude towards Rita and her education, after
his early indifference, is very positive. A bond is
emerging between the two characters and their
relationship benefits them both. Rita receives the
education which she craves and Frank, for his part, is
given a new lease of life by Rita’s exuberant enthusiasm.

Consider what When Rita confesses that the past week has been “dead
effect Denny's lack quiet in the shop’ so she has been able to read three
ofsupport for novels, it prepares us for her later admission that she
Rita’s education writes her essays there too. This is the first indication
has on their that all is not well with her marriage to Denny and,
marriage. more particularly, that he is not supporting her in her
studies.
In trying to understand Frank’s comment that she can
continue to read her racy novels as long as she doesn’t
write about them in the examination, Rita has to put
the concept into her own language before she fully
grasps his meaning: “You mean, it’s all right to go out
an’ have a bit of slap an’ tickle with the lads as long
as you don’t go home an’ tell your mum?’ Throughout
the rest of the play, Rita’s intellectual development
goes hand-in-hand with the development of her
language.

20 Vv
SUMMARIES AcT I

The openings and endings of the scenes are usually

dramatic, humorous, or both. Willy Russell is acutely
aware of the need to grab the attention of the audience
at the outset and then end on a powerful note, as if to
carry over the momentum into the next scene. The end
of this scene marks an important shift in attitude for
Rita. Her admission that her mind is full of ‘junk’ and
requires ‘clearin’ out’ is evidence of a growing self-
awareness.

GLOSSARY Sons and Lovers a novel by D.H. Lawrence (1885-1936)

SCENE 4 When Rita comes on stage at the beginning of this

scene, it is in stark contrast to her earlier entrances. As
she walks in the room, she shuts the door and stands
still, an unusual action considering her animated
movements of the previous scenes. As she wrestles with
her studies, in this case Forster’s novel, her whole
character begins to change and develop. Her mind
freezes when contemplating Forster’s phrase, ‘only
connect’, which has her completely baffled. For the
moment, however, Frank is more concerned with Rita’s
one-line response to an essay on Ibsen’s Peer Gynt. It is
now that we learn that Rita, unsupported by her
husband, does all her studying in the shop. Because the
salon has been so busy during the week, Rita has been
forced to encapsulate all her ideas into the briefest of
responses.
Frank tells Rita that, in an examination, there is a
certain way of answering questions that is expected and,
if she is to pass, then she must conform. So, to allow
her the opportunity of succeeding, he sets aside some
time during the tutorial for Rita to write a more
considered answer.
Rita possesses a Sparked off by the thought of Peer Gynt’s search for
negative vision of the meaning of life, Rita digresses about one of her
the working-class customers who wished to do the same thing. She also
culture.

yA 21
AcT I SUMMARIES

adds that such a feeling is common to the working

class, who appear to have lost their ‘culture’. All she
sees is ‘everyone pissed, or on the Valium, tryin’ to get
from one day to the next’. She likens it to a disease
which no one dare mention and draws parallels with
events in her own marriage. In identifying all these
links, Frank points out that she is doing exactly
what Forster was suggesting when he advised, ‘only
connect’.

This is a valuable lesson for Rita and, along with the

subsequent reasonable success of her Peer Gynt essay
(at least, compared to her first attempt!), it strengthens
the notion that, very gradually, she is becoming a
‘proper’ student.
(( OMMENT Just as Rita conformed to expectations at school by not
trying to succeed, she now has to conform to the
expectations of examiners by adapting her style of
language.
The conflict between home and studying becomes more
apparent in this scene. Perhaps Denny realises that
education will take Rita away from him. If so, it is
ironic (see Literary Terms) that, in not supporting his
wife’s studies, he creates an even bigger division
between the two of them.

22 V
SUMMARIES AcTI

Note how Rita is Rita is being moulded and changed by Frank. Her
becoming character undergoes a major transformation, even to the
increasingly extent of altering her natural speech. The language of
conscious ofher the essay is not Rita’s. Rather, it is the voice of a
own use of ‘proper’ student and, when we witness her success with
language. the essay, we recognise that Rita is well on the way
towards her ultimate goal.

GLOSSARY Peer Gynt a play by Norwegian dramatist, Henrik Ibsen

(1828-1906)
Valium a tranquillising drug
the Unions trade unions which are bodies of workers set up to
improve working conditions

4 23
"TEST YOURSELF (ActI Scenes 1-4)

A Identify the writers Rita is talking about.

1 ‘It was about this old man who runs away

from hospital an’ goes out on the ale. He
gets pissed an’ stands in the street shoutin’
an’ challengin’ death to come out an’ fight.
It’s dead good’

2 ‘Haven't y’ read it? It’s

a fantastic book. D’ y’
wanna lend it?’

3 ‘It’s crap because

the feller who wrote 4 ‘Do it on the radio’
it was a louse’

Check your answers on page 67.

By Consider these issues.

a The effect Rita’s entrances have on e Why Rita was unsuccessful at school.

the audience. f The problems faced by Rita in

b Why Frank describes Rita as ‘the first restarting her education as an adult.
breath of air that’s been in this room g The reasons for changing her name
for years’. from Susan to Rita.
c Why Frank tries to persuade Ritato 4 What Rita feels about working-class
opt for another tutor. ‘culture’.
d The reasons for Frank’s drink
problems.

24 Y
SUMMARIES AcT I

ACT ] (CONTINUED)

SCENE 5 Rita’s problems at home are intensified when we learn

that Denny has burned all her books after finding that
Do you think it is she was taking contraceptive pills again. She states
inevitable that the that it is as if she was having an affair, although all
marriage will she is doing is ‘findin’ meself. Rita recognises that this
break down? is the root of her marital crisis. She has changed and
left Denny ‘wonderin’ where the girl he married has
gone to’.

The audience senses that the turning point for Rita is

when Frank asks her whether she wants to discontinue
the course. There is no hesitation in her reply, ‘No.
No?’ and rather than discussing her marriage problems,
it is significant that Rita chooses to talk about Chekhov
instead. It is literature, she claims, which gives her life.
When he searches for the play on the top shelf, Frank
discovers a bottle of whisky which he brings down and
pours for himself and Rita. His drink problem is known
about by his employers, but, Frank says, they turn a
blind eye to it so long as Frank is discreet and takes
care to hide the signs. His drinking has become heavier
since he ceased writing poetry, and when he is pressed
by Rita, he confides that he stopped because he ‘got it
wrong’. Instead of creating poetry, he was trying to
create literature. The scene ends with Rita persuading
Frank to visit an amateur production of The Importance
ofBeing Earnest.

Comment Frank admits that he stopped writing poetry because of

a lack of inspiration, but he is also critical of his poetic
Like Frank's style. His poetry was so finely crafted and academic in
poetry, Rita’s its style that it was almost devoid of real life. Because
analysis of he has spent all his life in university circles, mixing with
literature 1s cold academics all the time, his writing became rather dry
and detached. and intellectual.

4 25
AcT I SUMMARIES

There is a clear parallel to be drawn between Frank’s

criticism of his own poetry and the way he is
attempting to educate Rita. Just as his poetry 1s
emotionally barren, so he is pushing Rita in the same
direction. The more educated she becomes, the less
flamboyant is her language and behaviour. Instead of
responding to texts naturally and with honesty from the
heart, she learns to use her mind to analyse them in a
rather cold and characterless fashion. It would appear
that to succeed in the academic world, it is necessary for
Rita to curb her lively ways and be transformed into a
‘proper’ student.

GLOSSARY The Seagull a play by Anton Chekhov (1860-1904)

The Importance of Bein’ Thingy The /mportance of Being Earnest,
a play by Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

SCENE 6 Frank’s moment of relaxation at the beginning of

this scene is quickly shattered when Rita bursts
Rita now chooses through the door in a state of intense excitement, after
to spend her visiting a professional theatre the night before. She
evenings at the is desperate to talk about the play, Macbeth, but finds
theatre rather it difficult to express her ideas: “Wasn’t his wife a
than in the pub. cow, eh”

Frank discusses the concept of tragedy (see Literary

Terms) with Rita, as opposed to something which is
tragic. Rita invites Frank to an art gallery the next day
and the scene ends with Frank’s invitation to Rita to
attend a dinner party organised by his partner, Julia.
Denny is also invited but Rita suspects that he will not
go. Her lack of confidence is expressed by her final
question, ‘What shall I wear?’
(COMMENT If the audience had begun to accept that Rita was well
on the route to academic success, then they are allowed
to see her limitations at first-hand when she discusses
Macbeth with Frank.

26 yA
SUMMARIES AcT I

Rita’s lack of a critical, academic vocabulary is not her

only limitation at this time. In terms of literary
concepts, she demonstrates her lack of knowledge when
discussing the notion of tragedy. Rita responds to
literature from the heart. Whereas Frank is critical and
detached, Rita becomes involved and engaged with the
characters on stage, almost to the point of shouting out
loud to warn Macbeth of his impending doom.
Throughout the play, however, Rita demonstrates a
certain amount of self-awareness. Looking out of the
window, she sees the other students who she is
desperately trying to emulate and recognises that she is
not yet one of them.
Think about the There is a constant thread of humour running
balance between throughout the play. Note how Rita’s language is, once
humour and again, the source of much comedy in the play. When
seriousness in the she suddenly remembers that she should have been back
play. at work a long time ago, her reaction is typical: ‘Christ
— me customer. She only wanted a demi-wave — she'll
come out looking like a friggin’ muppet.’
Rita’s lack of confidence to Frank’s invitation has links
with the next scene where we find that Rita has been
unable to attend the party through fear of making a fool
of herself, whether it be to do with wearing the wrong
clothes, saying the wrong things or even taking the
wrong wine. Her metamorphosis into a confident,
educated woman is far from complete.

GLOSSARY Pre-ordained written in the stars, decided previously

SCENE 7 This is a pivotal scene in Rita’s development. Having

been unable to pluck up the confidence or courage to
cross over the threshold at Frank’s dinner party, she
now comes to explain why. One of Rita’s concerns was
that she might have brought the wrong type of wine.
Here again, Willy Russell undercuts the seriousness of

4 27
AcT I SUMMARIES

the situation with his humour. ‘It wouldn’t have

mattered if you'd walked in with a bottle of Spanish
plonk’ says Frank. ‘It was Spanish’ comes the reply.
Frank asks Rita why she simply couldn’t be herself, and
she admits that it’s because she doesn’t want to be
‘myself. She wants to become a different person, but at
this stage of the play she is trapped between two
worlds, a ‘half-caste’ as she describes herself. She is
uncomfortable with the people she lives with and yet
does not fit in with Frank’s world either.
The reaction of Initially, her reaction was to stop visiting Frank’s
Rita’s mother tutorials and get on with her life. However, on going
strengthens her back to the pub where her family are enjoying a
convictions. Saturday night sing-song, she sees her mother crying.
When she asks her why, her mother replies ‘because
we could sing better songs than those’. Rita recognises
the significance of this comment immediately. Just like
her mother, Rita is metaphorically (see Literary
Terms) searching for a new ‘song’ to sing, and that is
why she eventually decides to carry on with her
education.
(COMMENT The invitation to dinner is partly a symbolic (see
Literary Terms) act. To attend the function would
signify acceptance in Frank’s social circle, and yet Rita
knows that she is not ready for the transition from her
world into that of Frank. She fails to do it at this stage
because she knows in her heart that she does not
possess the language, the knowledge or the style of the
middle-class academics to whom she aspires.
It is interesting to note that Frank describes Rita’s
character as ‘funny, delightful, charming’ but Rita,
herself, rejects his attempts to compliment her as being
patronising. She does not want to be funny but wants
to ‘talk seriously with the rest of you’. Spurred on by
this desire, Rita’s metamorphosis gathers momentum.

28 V
SUMMARIES AcT I

For the people in Rita’s family, Saturday night is spent

at the local pub. The play sets up the contrast between
this working-class culture as opposed to the culture of
the middle class, who are seen to entertain themselves
at dinner parties or at the theatre.
The act of Rita’s mother crying has a metaphorical
(see Literary Terms) significance. Denny gets her
laughing again and, because we have made the
connection between Rita and her mother who are both
dissatisfied with their lives, we are forced to consider
the logical argument that the same could happen to
Rita. The laughter could very easily cover the pain
which exists just below the surface.

GLOSSARY Shaw George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), an Irish

dramatist

SCENE Q Rita tells Frank how Denny has given her the
ultimatum: either stop studying and come off the pill or
leave altogether. Having chosen the latter, she turns up
at Frank’s room with her suitcase. Rita has arranged to
spend some time with her mother until she can find a
flat of her own.
Note how Rita Under the circumstances, Frank is finding it difficult
uses the end ofher to carry on ‘business as usual’ and is reticent about
marriage to spur criticising one of Rita’s essays. Yet Rita wants to
her on to succeed discuss her Macbeth essay, rather than dwelling on her
with her studies. home troubles with Denny, in a similar way that she
wanted to talk about Chekhov and Frank tried to get
her to forget studies and focus on what was happening
in her life in Scene 5. Frank therefore discusses Rita’s
essay, telling her that it is ‘totally honest’ and ‘moving’,
but in terms of helping her pass exams it is ‘worthless’.
Rita asks how to go about changing this, but Frank
states he does not know if he can do this as he will
have to change her. However, Rita is adamant that

Y 29
AcTI SUMMARIES

she wants to change and she needs Frank to help in

her education, even if it means abandoning her
‘uniqueness’.

Rita’s strength and determination shine through when,

at the end of the scene, the curtain closes with her
tearing up the essay, dumping it in the bin and
preparing to ‘start again’.
(ComMENT Note how Rita’s changing character is causing her to
leave ‘Susan’ further and further behind. The
In attempting to dissolution of her marriage is the last tie with her
change, Rita is former life and Rita is now free to develop as she
leaving her family pleases. Any sadness or sympathy we feel for Denny
and friends disappears when we consider the way he has restricted
behind. her intellectual growth. In addition, there is also the
notion that he, too, is a free agent once again and that
he will, undoubtedly find another wife, and probably
someone who is more suited to his lifestyle and his
desire for children.
Frank 1s concerned When Frank tells Rita that, for her to succeed, she
that Rita’s may have to abandon her ‘uniqueness’, he is recognising
development might that to change Rita’s entire being may not necessarily
not, necessarily, be be a wholly positive achievement. Having witnessed the
entirely for the best. destruction of her marriage as a direct result of her
education, he is rightly concerned that, instead of

30 V
SUMMARIES AcT I

finding herself, she may in fact be losing her true

identity. Furthermore, it is apparent to Frank that in
training Rita to quell her vibrant character and write
from the head rather than the heart, he is actually
negating all those features which attracted him to Rita
in the first place.
This is a crucial scene which encapsulates Rita’s
personality, aims and desires, and is a highly dramatic
way of bringing this first act to an end. Rita’s
determination to change prepares us for Act II.

GLOSSARY narked a slang expression for annoyed

31
‘TEST YOURSELF (ActI Scenes 5-8)

RN Identify the people Rita and Frank are talking about.

1 ‘| see him lookin’ at me 2 ‘If she knew | was at the

sometimes, an’ | know theatre with an irresistible
what he’s thinkin’, | do thing like you? Rita, it
y’ know, he’s wonderin’ would be deaf and dumb
where the girl he breakfasts for a week’
married has gone to’

4 ‘An’ she was cryin’, but 3 ‘You see he goes blindly on

no one could get it out of and on and with every step
her why she was cryin’. he’s spinning one more
Everyone just said she piece of thread which will
was pissed an’ we should eventually make up the
get her home’ network of his own tragedy’

Check your answers on page 67.

|B Consider these issues.

a The ways in which Willy Russell f Why Rita describes herself as a ‘half-
brings out humour in the play. caste’.
b Why Denny burns Rita’s books. g What happens in the pub and why it
c The differences in Rita’s and Frank’s is a turning point in Rita’s
use of language. development.

d The reasons why Rita could not go to

Frank’s dinner party.
e The way Rita responds to seeing
Macbeth, compared with Frank’s
comments.

32 VY
SUMMARIES Act 11

act |]
SCENE 1 A significant amount of time has elapsed since Act I.
Frank has, once again, begun to write poetry and, when
Compare Rita’s Rita enters, she is a different Rita, bursting through the
entrance with her door as usual but this time dressed in new second-hand
opening entrance clothes which she displays for Frank in the form of a
ofActI. twirl.
Rita’s success at summer school means that she is
brimming with confidence. She has stopped smoking,
moved in with a new flatmate called Trish and, as she
admits, ‘I’m havin’ the time of me life’. S

2 WZ ad
Yi 4) \ \y

mulaege~
o y} O
f
y AY

te
4g,

Frank, on the other hand, is having a bad time of it.

Julia has left him during the summer and, although she
has now returned, Frank is still drinking heavily.
Moreover, Rita’s present of a pen with the inscription,
“Must only be used for poetry’ only serves as a further
reminder of his own creative failings. Rita is attempting
to reform him, but Frank knows only too well that
Rita’s influence is a temporary measure and that, like all
students, her leaving is inevitable.
To change the mood, Frank tries to introduce Rita to
the work of a ‘new’ poet but he is surprised to learn that

4 33
Act SUMMARIES

For the first time, she has already ‘done’ William Blake at summer school.
Frank realises that Rita recites a poem from memory and explains that
he ts not fully in even though Blake was not on the syllabus, one of her
control ofRita’s tutors was such a ‘Blake freak’ that she ended up
education. reading his works anyway.
(omMMENT Rita’s changing language is instantly recognisable.
When she tells Frank about her conversation with the
Rita 1s curbing her tutor who asked her whether she was fond of
‘uniqueness and Ferlinghetti, Rita acknowledges that the old Rita would
taking a serious have said ‘only with Parmesan cheese’. Instead, her
attitude towards reply is a carefully controlled and serious response:
her studies. ‘Actually I’m not too familiar with the American poets.’
She also uses words like analogy, parody and tragedy
with apparent ease, in contrast to not knowing what
assonance (see Literary Terms) meant at the beginning
of Act I. Note, also, how she is beginning to echo the
words of Trish, her flatmate, when stating that ‘A room
is like a plant’. ;
Frank is being stifled by his lecturer’s role in the
university. It offers little creativity and gives him no
satisfaction. On top of this, his relationship with Julia
seems to have stagnated. Rita senses this, wanting to
throw open the windows and bring new life to Frank’s
room.
With Rita’s newly acquired confidence and intellectual
maturity, we detect a subtle shift in the balance of
their relationship. Frank’s relevance to Rita is not
quite what it was at the beginning of her education.
For example, her assertion that she had already ‘done’
Blake at summer school is the first occasion when
Rita surprises Frank with her literary knowledge.
Putting the book back on the shelf is significant,
indicating that, for once, Frank has fallen out of step
with Rita’s education. The fact that she developed
good relationships with other tutors on the course

34 V
SUMMARIES Accra

means the beginning of a sense of insecurity and even

jealousy for Frank.

GLOSSARY Ferlinghetti Lawrence Ferlinghetti, an American poet

Blake William Blake (1757-1827), an English poet, painter
and engraver

SCENE 3; Arriving late for her tutorial, Rita begins by speaking

with an affected voice which she sees as ‘talking
Rita appears properly’. Her flatmate, Trish, has told her that ‘there is
rather comical and not a lot of point in discussing beautiful literature in an
foolish, taking ugly voice’, but Frank is quick to point out that she
things too far. hasn’t got an ugly voice, or at least she didn’t have. He
tells her to be herself but, as Rita indicated earlier in
the play she is trying to become educated simply to
avoid being ‘meself’.
Continuing from her success at the summer school and
her growing confidence which has resulted in her
changing character, we now learn that for the first
time, Rita has actually mixed with the ‘proper’
students and she has quickly realised that they
are not so infallible after all. Her illusions of their
academic prowess are shattered as she wins her
argument with the other students about D.H.
Lawrence. j
Note the element Rita reports that one of the students, nicknamed Tiger,
ofdiscord which is has invited her on a Christmas vacation to the south of
creeping into the France with the rest of his crowd. Frank reacts with
relationship of what appears to be jealousy, making excuses about why
Frank and Rita. she would be unable to go.
Rita is shocked and cuts Frank short, suggesting that he
is being ridiculous. The scene ends, however, with
Frank returning one of Rita’s essays, telling her that it
‘wouldn’t look out of place’ with the work of the other
students on his desk.

VY 35
Act 11 SUMMARIES

(ComMENT Rita is late because she has been talking to the other
students down on the grass and this represents a shift in
her attitude and confidence. Rita is now able to hold
her own in academic circles, whether it be down on the
lawns below Frank’s window or in a more formal
manner at the summer school.
Trish is becoming another influence in her life. She is a
different form of teacher and becomes a sort of role
model for Rita.

Placing the essay on top of the pile is symbolic (see

Literary Terms). Rita has finally ‘made it’. No longer is
she out of place, and no longer can she describe herself
as a ‘half-caste’.

GLOSSARY Dalek referring to the popular sci-fi programme Dr Who, a robot

with an electronic voice
spoutin’ a slang expression meaning talking at length
Lady Chatterley to Sons and Lovers novels by the English writer
D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930); the full title of Lady Chatterley
is Lady Chatterley’s Lover

SCENE 3 The lights come up on Rita, and it is Frank who is very

drunk that makes the dramatic, if rather clumsy
Note the unusual entrance. He has been reported by some students for
opening of this being drunk and falling off the rostrum when delivering
scene. a lecture. The university authorities have stopped short
of giving Frank the sack, but he is being forced to take
a sabbatical somewhere abroad for a year or so,
presumably to get him out of the way.
Frank reveals his feelings of discontent towards his
regular students when describing them as ‘a crowd of
mealy-mouthed pricks who wouldn’t know a poet if you
beat them about the head with one’. In his lecture, he
has quoted Rita’s line from earlier in the play:
“‘Assonance means getting the rhyme wrong’. Rather
understandably, the students are disdainful for they do

36 bg
SUMMARIES Act Il

not share Frank’s understanding of the line. Out of

context, it sounds ridiculous.
Frank's Rita is ready to postpone the tutorial until the following
reservations week, but Frank engages her in a conversation about
about Rita’s her essay on William Blake. He concedes that if it were
development written in an examination it would earn a high grade,
come to the fore but he dislikes it because it is too impersonal. Rita
in this scene. complains that, in the beginning, Frank had urged her
to write in this objective style. The dialogue develops
into an argument with Rita confirming that she no
longer needs Frank as much as she used to when she
first started attending his classes.
The scene ends on a lighter, if not ironic (see Literary
Terms), note with Frank stating that he had read
Rubyfruit Jungle and liked it, a book Rita had referred
to in Act I Scene 1.
(COMMENT Note how Frank is lapsing into Rita’s language, using
the phrase ‘Completely off my cake’. He also swears at
the start of the scene, uses her original definitions of
literary terms like assonance, and is even reading the
books she read, reminiscent of Rita at the beginning of
the play.
By educating Rita, Frank changes her, but he also
wants to retain the old Rita. The more she develops,
the less she reminds him of the ‘girl’ who walked
through his door and brought a ‘breath of air’ to his life.
Ironically (see Literary Terms), this is akin to Denny’s
reaction in the first half of the play when he, too,
wondered where the ‘girl’ he married had gone to.
The scene confirms that Rita does not need Frank as
much as she needed him earlier in the play, and it is
seemingly inevitable that their relationship will break
down. Frank had always perceived that Rita would
only need him for a short time before she was able to

V 37
ActT 1 SUMMARIES

exist independently, but this does not lessen the blow

for him. Once again, just like Denny who precipitated
the marriage breakdown, Frank’s petulant behaviour
only serves to create further problems with Rita.

GLOSSARY sabbatical paid leave from your place of employment

Australia might be more apt referring to the time when British
criminals were transported to Australia

38 Vv
‘TEST YOURSELF (Act II Scenes 1-3)

rN Identify the people Rita and Frank are talking about.

2 ‘There was this really

1 ‘She’s great. Y’ mad one with them; I’ve
know she’s dead only been talkin’ to them
classy. Y’ know like, for five minutes and he’s
she’s got taste ...’ inviting me to go abroad
with them all’

3 ‘They suggested a sabbatical

for a year — or ten ... Europe
— or America ... | suggested
that Australia might be more
apt — the allusion was lost
on them ...’
4 ‘Or maybe they did it
because they’re a crowd of
mealy-mouthed pricks who
wouldn’t know a poet if you
beat them about the head
with one’

Check your answers on page 67.

|B Consider these issues.

a The difference in Rita’s character e Frank’s surprise when finding out that
compared with before the interval. Rita has already studied Blake’s
b The punishment dealt out by the poetry.
university authorities was unfair. f What Rita learns when she plucks up
¢ Frank’s reaction to the news that Rita the courage to talk to the other
has been invited to go to the south of students down on the grass.
France for Christmas with the other © g As Rita becomes more learned and
students. more educated, Frank criticises her

d The influence which Trish has over essays for not containing any of her
Rita. own views.

Y 39
Act Il SUMMARIES

ACT ll (CONTINUED)

SCENE 4 Because Rita is late for her tutorial, Frank rings the
hairdresser’s shop only to find that she has left her job.
She now works in a bistro. When questioning Rita
about why she has done this, and why she hasn’t told
him, she says she is fed up of talking about ‘irrelevant
rubbish’ and she is now able to talk ‘about what’s
important’.
Frank asks whether Mr Tyson, or Tiger as he is known
to his friends, is one of Rita’s customers at the bistro.
She admits that he is and that she finds him and the
other students fascinating. She enjoys being in their
company because they are so full of life.
Frank’s reaction is to ask whether she can be bothered
to attend the classes anymore and to suggest that she
now dislikes spending any amount of time there. Rita’s
reply is emphatic: “For God’s sake, I don’t want to stop
coming here. I’ve got to come here. What about my
exam?”
Throughout the scene, Frank is pouring whisky down
his throat and Rita is blunt when telling him that if he
stopped drinking, he ‘might be able to talk about things
that matter instead of where I do or don’t work; an’
then it might be worth comin’ here’.
Would Frank have In an attempt to test whether Rita does or does not
given Rita the know what ‘matters’, Frank hands her some of his own
poems ifhe had not poetry, asking for a critical, non-subjective and non-
been drinking? sentimental appraisal by the following week.
(COMMENT The change in jobs is part of Rita’s metamorphosis into
an entirely different character. Just like changing her
name and trying to alter the sound of her own voice, it
reflects a desire to put her previous existence firmly in
the past.

Vv
SUMMARIES Act Il

Frank’s apparent jealousy over Tiger makes him seem

insecure and almost like a schoolboy. The reason,
presumably, is that Frank feels that he is ‘losing’ Rita.
When he says, ‘perhaps you don’t want to waste your
time coming here anymore?’ he cuts a rather pathetic
figure, wallowing in his own misery. Drink, however,
clearly plays a part in this scene and accentuates Frank’s
reactions.
Asking Rita to criticise his poetry is Frank’s idea of a
‘test’, not in the conventional sense, but in the sense
that it will clarify whether or not Rita has lost the
ability to respond openly and honestly. He is afraid that
she has lost her ‘uniqueness’ and that she has become
cold and subjective like the rest of his students whom
he despises so much.
SCENE 5 Having sat up late with her flatmate, Trish, to read
Frank’s poems, Rita returns the following day to his
Frank is testing room at the university, full of praise for his work. She
Rita by giving her describes the poems as ‘brilliant’, ‘witty’, ‘profound’ and
the poems to ‘full of style’, but Frank’s view is in stark contrast: ‘this
analyse. clever, pyrotechnical pile of self-conscious allusion is
worthless, talentless shit and should be recognized as
such by anyone with a shred of common sense.’ He
makes the point that Rita, when she first started her
visits, would have said exactly the same. He feels that
like Mary Shelley, writer of Frankenstein, he has created
his own ‘monster’. He recognises that the Rita who first
brought that ‘breath of air’ into his room has gone
forever. In describing the poems as ‘pretentious,
characterless and without style’, he is suggesting that
the new Rita who admires them so much must possess
these same qualities.
Leaving the room after being insulted, Rita tells Frank
that she no longer needs him because she is now
educated with a ‘room full of books’. She now knows
‘what clothes to wear’ and ‘what wine to buy, what plays

yA 41
Act il SUMMARIES

to see, what papers and books to read’. Frank sees this

as worthless, that her newly found culture is no better
than her past. He says that she has not found a ‘better
song’ but a ‘different song’, which does not fit with who
she is.
As she leaves, he calls her Rita and she laughs in his
face. She says that no one calls her Rita any more but
him and that she ‘dropped’ the name when she realised
it was ‘pretentious crap’.
(CoMMENT When Frank asks Rita, “Found a culture have you
Rita? Found a better song to sing have you?” he is
Note the allusion referring to the night when Rita is in the pub and
to Act I Scene 7. she spots her mother crying. The ‘song’ represents
an alternative and better lifestyle. Frank, however,
is not convinced that Rita has found anything
better.
The relationship 1s The change of name seals the metamorphosis of Rita’s
clearly breaking character. Instead of playing at being different, Rita has
down. Frank finally found her true self. She no longer needs to hide
regrets the way behind a new name and accepts that she is Susan.
Rita has altered Frank’s name-calling, unfortunately, suggests that he
and blames himself. feels Rita has still not ‘found herself.

GLOSSARY classical allusion references to the works of great writers from

the past
Mary Shelley writer (1797-1851) of the Gothic novel,
Frankenstein, which Frank refers to
Gothic eightennth-century novels which deal with macabre or
mysterious events, often in remote or desolate settings
Virginia ... Charlotte ... Jane ... Emily Frank refers to Virginia
Woolf, Charlotte Bronté, Jane Austen and Emily Bronté, all
British women novelists, in order to mock Rita

SCENE 6 This short scene begins with Frank’s telephone call to

the bistro in order to inform Rita that she has been
entered for her examination.

42 Y
SUMMARIES Act 11

Think about Initially, he asks for Rita but quickly realises his mistake
Frank's reasons for and changes the name to Susan. As she is not there, he
ringing Rita. is forced to hang up. There is a black-out to denote
the passing of time and when the lights come up again
he is talking to Trish over the phone, giving her details
of the examination to pass on to Rita. Here, again,
he cannot become accustomed to calling her Susan:
‘Erm, yes I’m a friend of Rita’s ... Rita ... I’m sorry
Susan.’
(COMMENT The telephone calls show that, since his last meeting
with Rita, Frank has had time to consider his words
and actions, and come to the realisation that Rita
should at least have the opportunity of sitting her
examination.

Frank is unable to accept the change of name because it

represents the change in character. As she arrived with
the name of Rita, Frank will always associate it with the
‘breath of air’ which swept into his room on the night
of her first tutorial.
SCENE 7 The final scene opens with Rita, smoking again and
wearing a large winter coat to illustrate that time has,
Consider the effect once again, moved on. It is now close to Christmas and
on the audience of Rita has passed her examination. She is returning to
Frank packing his thank Frank for being a good teacher and is surprised
belongings into the to find him packing his belongings into several tea-
tea-chests. chests.
The university authorities have been forced to respond
to Frank’s drink problem and, rather than sacking him,
they are sending him away to Australia for two years.
He tries to make light of it when joking that the
Australians named their favourite drink after a literary
figure: ‘Forster’s Lager they call it.’ However, the
laughter only just covers the pain he is undoubtedly
going through. Julia is not going with him and this,
effectively, means the end of their relationship.

VY 43
Act 1 SUMMARIES

Rita tells Frank about the question on Peer Gynt in her

examination which was the same as the one set by
Frank in one of her early tutorials. Earlier she simply
wrote ‘Do it on the radio’ and Frank was critical. Now,
she suspects that Frank would have been proud of her if
she had responded in this way. It seems as though part
of her wanted to, but she chose not to, and that ability
to choose is the most important gift that Frank has
been able to bestow on Rita. She also tells him about
Trish, who was her model and teacher, trying to ‘top’
herself.
See how Frank's Rita evades Frank’s invitation to go to Australia and
tentative tells him that she’s already been invited to the south of
suggestion that she France with Tiger and his friends and to her mother’s
should go to for Christmas. When Frank asks what she will do, she
Australia with replies, ‘I dunno. I might go to France. I might go to
him reveals his me mother’s. I might even have a baby. I dunno. I'll
lack of confidence. make a decision. I'll choose.’

Frank gives Rita a present of a dress and Rita says that

she feels that all she has ever done is to take things
from Frank. However, there is one thing which she can
do for him and, grabbing a pair of scissors from the
desk, she prepares to cut his hair with the closing line,
‘Tm gonna take ten years off you’.

V
SUMMARIES Act 11

(Comment Lighting a cigarette marks a partial return to Rita’s old

ways. In this scene we have evidence that Rita, or Susan
as she is now known again, has matured into a
confident and articulate woman who is finally at ease
with herself. Even her language, although less rough
around the edges, is more like her speech at the start of
the play. No longer does she feel it necessary to change
her voice, she can simply be herself.
When talking about ‘Forster’s Lager’, Frank is referring
to Rita’s early error over the spelling of E.M. Forster's
name. Note how this comes about in the form of gentle
teasing. It is noticeable that the warmth and light-
hearted way of talking has returned to their
relationship.
The present of the dress refers to earlier in the play
when Rita refused to buy a new dress until she passed
| her first examination. Frank’s love for Rita, possibly
suggested by his jealousy earlier in the play, now
becomes evident as he shows that he has remembered
her words and acted with tenderness in buying the gift.
Note how the The ending of the play has distinctly sexual overtones,
comic framework when Rita suggests that there is one thing that she can
of the play isre- do for him to say thank you for all his teaching. In a
established right at moment of comic genius, Willy Russell has Rita
the end. undercut the tension of the scene by taking out a pair of
scissors to trim Frank’s hair.

GLOSSARY metaphorically see metaphor in Literary Terms

f Forster’s Lager a well-known brand of Australian lager, but
Frank is jokingly referring to Rita’s early confusion over the
names when reading the work of E.M. Forster

Y 45
‘TEST YOURSELF (Act II Scenes 4-7)

Identify the people referred to in these lines.

2 ‘It’s the sort of thing

1 ‘They're young, and that gives publishing a
they're passionate about bad name. Wit? You'll
things that matter. find more wit in the
They're not trapped’ telephone book’

3 ‘She spends half her life

eatin’ wholefoods an’ health
foods to make her live
longer, an’ the other half
tryin’ to kill herself’

4 ‘| bought it some time ago —

for erm — for an educated
woman friend — of mine’

Check your answers on page 67.

hey Consider these issues.

a Why Rita neglects to tell Frank that e What Rita feels that education has
she has left the hairdresser’s and given her.
begun work in a bistro. f The significance of Frank’s present to
oa Why Frank gives his poems to Rita. Rita.

iv) Rita’s assessment of his poetry and = g Why the comic ending is so effective.
Frank’s reaction to it.

Qa Why she has reverted back to the

name of Susan and why Frank still
calls her Rita.
 ParT THREE

( 'OMMENTARY

"| HEMES

PEOPLE AND ENVIRONMENT

Frank With all the action taking place in Frank’s study, we

always see him in the middle of his own environment.
The room is cluttered with books and his other
belongings. Comfortable to the point of stagnation,
Consider how far it is only when Rita comes on the scene that the room
both characters are has its first “breath of life’ for many years. Later in the
forced to reassess play, she feels the need to throw open the window
their positions in saying that ‘a room is like a plant’ and it needs air.
society. This stifling, rather oppressive atmosphere could be
one reason for Frank’s lack of creativity. Ironically
(see Literary Terms), at the end of the play, the
audience senses that his imminent banishment to
Australia could be just the thing to spark off some
form of poetic inspiration.
Rita Quite the opposite to Frank, Rita is cast into an alien
environment right from the beginning and, initially,
As with many of she appears to be like a fish out of water. Her accent
Willy Russell's and dialect (see Literary Terms) compared with
plays, the class’ Frank’s assured use of ‘Standard English’, and her
issue 1s never far working-class, non-academic background clearly set
Jrom the surface. her apart from Frank’s ‘proper’ students. The resultant
lack of confidence causes Rita to baulk at going to
Frank’s dinner party because she knows that she
doesn’t fit in. Sadly, she also realises that, having
outgrown her family and friends, she no longer
belongs in her own class either. Describing herself as a
‘freak’ and a ‘half-caste’ who is stuck between two
worlds, she realises that she must either turn the clock
back and return to her former life, or press ahead
with her education and become accepted in a new

v 47
THEMES CoMMENTARY

environment — the social circles inhabited by the other

university students.

[NCOMPLETENESS
In terms of their characters, both Frank and Rita show
an alarming sense of incompleteness.
Rita Rita, in particular, is driven by the need for education,
having realised that life has more to offer than her
mundane existence in a hairdressing salon. At the age
of twenty-six she feels ‘out of step’ and tells Frank that,
before considering having a baby with Denny, she
would need to discover herself first. Ultimately, this
costs Rita her marriage, her friends and her job.
Although Frank suggests that her education results
merely in her ‘singing a different song’, rather than
achieving a necessarily better life, the Rita at the end of
the play is a whole, rounded character, who possesses
the knowledge, skills and confidence to choose her own
direction in life.
Frank Frank, too, has something lacking in his life. His rather
jaded outlook not only results in poor teaching for the
majority of his students, but it also blocks his poetic
Instead of creativity. Already divorced from his wife, his
considering Frank's relationship with Julia does not appear set to last and he
banishment as a seeks comfort from all his problems in the form of a
punishment, how whisky bottle. Unlike Rita, he fails to attain a sense of
easy 1s it to view completeness in the play. However, the prospect of a
his trip to Australia new life in Australia, where things are ‘just beginning’
as a liberation? does at least offer some hope for the future.
Rita’s family Just like Frank, Rita’s family all seek to escape from
their problems through alcohol. The Saturday night
sing-song in the local pub is suggestive of happiness
and family unity, but the reality of the situation is very
different. Their laughter and song is a thin veil which

VY
COMMENTARY THEMES

covers up the painful knowledge that their lives are

unfulfilled and incomplete. Rita’s mother shows that
she has achieved this state of self-knowledge when she
cries, saying that they could all be singing ‘better songs
than those’.

JMETAMoRPHOSIS
Rita’s education is much more than simply learning
about English Literature. It represents a complete
change in her being. As Frank tells Rita, for her to pass
the examination, she must suppress or even abandon
her ‘uniqueness’. ‘I’m going to have to change you’, he
says. Her lively, irrepressible nature is suppressed and
even her language undergoes a transformation, causing
Frank finally to regret the way he has changed her. In
doing so, he compares himself to Mary Shelley, the
author of Frankenstein, because he also feels that he has
created a ‘monster’.
The metamorphosis is a slow and painful process for
Rita. Halfway through, she likens herself to a ‘half-
caste’, who is both out of place in her own society and
yet unable to fit into Frank’s social circles too. The
change of name from Susan to Rita is significant, but in
What ‘mistakes’ attempting to create a new identity, Rita inevitably
does Rita make on makes mistakes. She is taken in by the vitality of Tiger
her journey to and the other students and treats her flatmate, Trish,
education? with reverence. However, by the end of the play, Rita
has seen the truth. Trish, having survived a suicide
attempt, is seen as neurotic and fragile, while Tiger is
simply ‘a bit of a wanker really’. And, as if to seal the
change and acceptance of her character, she reverts back
to her original' name.
Thus, Rita emerges from her metamorphosis as a
whole, more rounded character. Gone is the affected
language, and along with the return of her natural

VY 49
‘THEMES CoMMENTARY

speech comes the re-establishing of her vibrant sense

of humour. She has matured and, symbolically
(see Literary Terms), Frank’s present of the dress
serves to emphasis this fact.

E,DUCATION
Rita finds herself on an Open University course as a
direct result of her failure at school where studying was
‘just for whimps’. She acknowledges that if she had
taken school seriously, she would have become different
to her friends.
Having broken free, to some extent, from that kind of
peer pressure, Rita’s second attempt at education shows
her to be an enthusiastic and highly motivated student.
She has an idealised vision of ‘proper’ students, to
which she feels she does not belong. Frank’s description
of his students is in stark contrast. ‘Proper students
don’t read and study’, he tells Rita. They are ‘appalling’
scholars who ‘wouldn’t know a poet if you beat them
about the head with one’.
Think about Because her desire to change her direction in life sets
Frank's strengths her apart from the other students, Frank is placed under
and weaknesses as pressure. Rita wants to learn ‘everything’ and Frank
a teacher. appears to baulk at the challenge. For the majority of
the time, his ‘appalling teaching’, as he describes it, is
‘quite in order for most of my appalling students’, but
Frank knows that Rita deserves better. Rita declines his
offer to find another tutor, sensing that their
compatibility will be all-important, and it is the
strength of their relationship which enables Rita to
develop into an excellent student.
What does Rita For Rita, education is a way out of an unfulfilling
gain from her lifestyle. In the final scene, after she has passed her
education and examination, she recognises that it may well have all
what does she lose? been worthless in the end, meaning that it may not

50 V
COMMENTARY STRUCTURE

radically alter her life, but at least she now has some
element of choice in her life. She does not mean the
type of choices open to her husband, Denny, such as
choosing between the eight different kinds of lager in
the pub, but real choices which can affect the direction
of her life. She has the opportunity to make a fresh start
in Australia with Frank, she could carry on working in
the bistro, she could return to her old job as a
hairdresser, or she could choose to do something
completely different.

GTRUCTURE
The play is structured (see Literary Terms) in two acts
and is perfectly balanced. The first half deals with Rita’s
struggle to fit into Frank’s world. He is the one who is
_ seen to be in control. He possesses all the knowledge
and speaks the right words. Rita, on the other hand, is
exactly the opposite in the sense that she struggles with
language in the beginning, only developing the
necessary skills to succeed in Acct II, after her success at
the summer school.
Consider how far Just as the first half of the play sees the breakdown of
Frank’s attitude 1s Rita’s marriage, the second half contains evidence of a
responsible for the rift between Frank and Julia. Act I witnesses Rita’s
conflict with Rita. gradual development to the point where she fits in,
whereas Act II reflects Frank’s growing alienation from
the world of the academics, eventually resulting in his
banishment to Australia. The great antithesis (see
Literary Terms) in the play is the fact that the more
Rita is educated, the less she needs Frank, and the more
this leads to a,relationship of conflict.
The interval is a ‘hinge’. After the interval and her
success on the summer school course, Rita seems to be
a changed character. Rita now appears to be the one

V 51
CHARACTERS COMMENTARY

beginning to take charge of the proceedings, and

Frank’s attempts to select a poet for study backfires on
him, when Rita announces that she has already analysed
Blake’s poetry on her summer course. Frank becomes
the character who is having problems, while Rita goes
from strength to strength.
The concluding scenes of the play reflect the increasing
sense of pace. They become shorter and there is the
undoubted feeling that time has elapsed in the build up
towards Rita’s examination.

The play is naturalistic in its setting (see Literary

Terms). The one set allows all the action to take place
inside Frank’s room and, by adhering to the unity
(see Literary Terms) of place, Willy Russell is able to
concentrate both on the drama and the humour of the
play.

(CHARACTERS

Rita
Initially, Rita is out of place in the middle-class world
of the academics. Her language is coarse and vulgar,
and she does not possess the vocabulary to express
literary concepts on anything other than a basic level.
When she passes on the opportunity of attending
Frank’s dinner party, she does so because she knows
that she will feel out of place in those surroundings.
She is preoccupied by wearing the right clothes and by
taking the correct type of wine, as well as worrying
about saying the right things.
As a student, Rita does not possess the self-confidence
of those people who attend his regular lectures.
Failure at school the first time round has meant that
Rita has developed an idealised vision of university

52 V
COMMENTARY CHARACTERS

At first: education. She does not want to go down on the lawn

Common below Frank’s window because she feels inferior.
Uneducated
Almost inevitably, the first half of the play charts the
Humorous
problems encountered by Rita in her married life with
Finally: Denny. Her education, it seems, takes her away from
Confident her family and friends into an entirely new sphere of
Mature life. Her husband wants her to have children and yet
Humorous Rita knows that before she has a baby, she needs to get
to know herself. She deceives Denny by taking the
contraceptive pill against his will, and knows how the
disintegration of their relationship is affecting him. In
Ts it inevitable return, Denny’s refusal to support Rita in her education
that Rita’s not only causes problems for her, but it probably
marriage will hastens the demise of their marriage. Rita has to study
break down? in quiet moments at work and, at one point in the play,
we learn that in a fit of temper after finding that Rita is
still taking contraceptives, Denny actually burns some
of her books.
Rita’s mother is an interesting character in as much as,
like Rita, she perceives that there is more to life than is
being offered to them at present. When she is crying in
the pub, she says it is ‘because we could sing better
songs than those’. Rita uses this metaphor
(see Literary Terms) to stiffen her resolve and work
even harder at her education — for it seems the only way
out.
Rita, herself, has a vision of the working class which is
not entirely favourable. She is dismissive of the
working-class culture and states that people are ‘either
pissed or on the Valium’, simply trying to get by. This
is what Rita is trying to avoid.
Throughout the play, it is clearly Frank who plays the
largest role in ‘educating’ Rita. However, as the play
develops, Rita begins to have other influences in her
life. New tutors at summer school introduce her to

VY 53
CHARACTERS CoMMENTARY

some of the great poets and Trish, Rita’s flatmate,

provides a different sort of role model. Once she has
overcome her feelings of inferiority towards the other
students, Rita is introduced to a whole new peer group.
She is no longer afraid to mix with them on the lawns,
and her job in the bistro offers even wider social access
to their circles.
Note the In the second half of the play, Rita changes quite
importance of the dramatically as a character. She becomes more
summer school in confident and takes control of situations herself. Her
giving Rita language changes and she learns to express herself
confidence. effectively. Her dress sense also undergoes a change as
she tries to find her true identity. The change of name
from Rita back to Susan is also important in this search.
It would be fair to say that, to some extent, Rita does
lose herself in this section of the play. The way she
changes her voice on the suggestion of Trish is one
clear example of a woman who is searching for an
identity. However, by the end of the play, Rita has
emerged as a confident, articulate character who is
perfectly at ease with herself.

In the opening scenes the audience receive a rather

negative picture of Frank. His drinking is clearly
becoming a problem and the reasons for this escapism
are deeply ingrained. He is dissatisfied with his role in
life. A previous marriage has failed and we soon learn
\\ y\ j "7
that his present relationship is far from ideal. He is
disrespectful towards his students and resents having to
GE): iy
use valuable drinking time in the pub on mature
students like Rita who have signed up for the Open
aUezAp ic University course. However, it is his recent inability
to write poetry which creates most frustration in
Frank.
Frustrated
In need of change

54 VY
CoMMENTARY CHARACTERS

Frank is the Rita gives Frank a new lease of life. The windows in his
teacher in the room are stuck fast, and even the door seems reluctant
play, but what to allow free access. Frank welcomes the way Rita
does he learn from seems to shake him out of his lethargy. Later in the
Rita? play she tells him that a room is like a plant and that he
should open the windows, sensing perhaps that Frank
needs change. Rita’s personality is refreshing because
she is so different to the other students. Her language,
although frequently inappropriate for academic circles,
is colourful and by contrast, Frank appears rather dull
and lifeless: “Tragedy in dramatic terms is inevitable,
pre-ordained.’ The impression the reader receives is
that Frank has said this line too many times for it to
mean anything to him. Just like Rita, he needs to
rediscover himself.
Ironically (see Literary Terms), the more Rita
develops, the less she needs Frank and so his self-
| esteem deteriorates. He eventually descends into
shameful drunkenness, falling off the stage in the
middle of his lecture. For Frank, witnessing Rita’s
development is not always a pleasurable experience. He
is uneasy about her metamorphosis and is particularly
concerned that, for Rita to be successful in her studies,
she may have to abandon what he describes as her
‘uniqueness.
Despite the rift with Rita, the ending re-establishes the
bond between the two characters. Frank tries to contact
Rita about the examination, which demonstrates a
genuine care and concern. Furthermore, the present of
the dress serves to underline the tenderness and
affection with which Frank regards Rita.

MIInor CHARACTERS
Although Frank and Rita are the only two figures to
appear on stage, we are introduced to a number of other

yA 55
CHARACTERS CoMMENTARY

characters through their words. These minor characters

have a significant part to play in the shaping of events
in Educating Rita and their relevance needs to be
emphasised.
Denny Rita’s husband fails to support her attempts to educate
herself, which he sees as a threat. He wants her to have
children and resents the fact that she does not share his
desire.

Julia Frank’s partner is one of his ex-students. After the

break-up of his marriage, Frank begins to live with
Julia, but even from the beginning of the play it appears
that their relationship is rather strained.
Rita’s mother Like Rita, she senses that there must be more to life
than her present, mundane existence and is saddened by
the feeling that she has wasted her opportunities of
fulfilment. Unless Rita acts in a positive manner and
changes her lifestyle, the audience suspects that this is
how she, too, will end up.
Trish Rita’s flatmate. Following the breakdown of Rita’s
marriage, Trish becomes a type of role model for Rita,
who is desperate to change, and Rita almost idolises her
new friend. Only at the end of the play does Rita see
Trish for what she really is, when her attempted suicide
reflects that she, too, has her own problems and
weaknesses.
Tiger Tiger, so-called because of his surname “Tyson’, seems
to be a leading figure among the students. He is a
potential love interest for Rita, and Frank certainly
appears to be jealous of him when he invites Rita to go
to France with his group of friends.

56 V
] ANGUAGE & STYLE

Much of the play’s humour is derived from Rita’s style

of talking and the contrast in speech between Frank
and Rita. Rita’s accent and dialect (see Literary Terms)
clearly pitches her in the working class and clashes with
Frank’s middle-class academic language. The way she
talks about the performance of Macbeth reflects her
enthusiasm: ‘But listen, it wasn’t borin’, it was bleedin’
great.’ Frank on the other hand, uses carefully measured
tones: “Tragedy in dramatic terms is inevitable,
pre-ordained.’ His vocabulary is rather jaded and
lethargic, as though he has made this speech countless
times before. The irony (see Literary Terms) of this
exchange is that, although Rita does not possess the
vocabulary to fully articulate her thoughts, the ideas
that she does express are clearly on the right lines.
Describing Lady Macbeth as ‘a cow’ and assonance
(see Literary Terms) as ‘getting the rhyme wrong’ may,
| at first, seem laughable and inappropriate, but on
reflection they are seen to be Rita’s early attempts to
find a suitable voice to express literary concepts and are
refreshing in contrast to a typical academic response.
Indeed, it is Rita’s vibrant language which helps to
enthuse Frank away from his unmotivated position.
Note how the In the second half of the play, Rita attempts to change
development of her speech when Trish, her flatmate, advises that
language is ‘beautiful literature’ should not be discussed in an ‘ugly
inextricably linked voice’. However, what Rita fails to realise is that her
with Rita’s change language is inextricably linked with her personality.
in character. Noticeably, at the end of the play when Rita is
confident in the knowledge that she has passed the
examination, her natural speech returns. Having
rejected the false name of Rita in favour of her original
name, Susan, she also rejects all the falseness of her
affected speech.
In the same way that Rita’s language changes, Frank
picks up several of her phrases such as ‘completely off

57
LANGUAGE & STYLE COMMENTARY

my cake’ and even resorts to swearing in the same style

as Rita did at the beginning of the play.
Rita’s coarseness, in itself, is humorous because it is so
inappropriate: ‘God, I’ve had enough of this. It’s borin’,
that’s what it is, bloody borin’. This Forster, honest to
God he doesn’t half get on my tits.’ Frank’s dry
response of ‘Good. You must show me the evidence’
adds to the humour. This verbal sparring is between
two completely different characters, coming from wildly
contrasting backgrounds. Culture and language clash
head on.
Look at the way The ending of the play is cleverly controlled by Willy
Willy Russell Russell. When Rita tells Frank that there is just one
controls the humour thing left that she can do for him in order to say thank
ofthe ending. you for his teaching, the audience detects more than a
hint of a sexual undertone. The comic ending is
achieved when the tension of the final scene is
alleviated by Rita taking out a pair of scissors and
preparing to cut Frank’s hair.
The style of the play is essentially naturalistic (see
Literary Terms). The only characters to appear on stage
are Frank and Rita while others, such as Denny and
Julia, are introduced to the audience through the
spoken word. The fact that the whole play is centred in
Frank’s room at the university also helps to establish the
naturalistic feel of Educating Rita. By adhering to the
unity (see Literary Terms) of place, Willy Russell is
able to concentrate the audience’s attention on the two
central characters. He is able to highlight Rita’s
attempts to fit into this alien environment and reflect
on the way Frank is prevented from stagnation by the
‘breath of air’ she brings with her.

58 V
ParT FOUR

Gtupy SKILLS

How TO USE QUOTATIONS

One of the secrets of success in writing essays is the

way you use quotations. There are five basic principles:
@ Put inverted commas at the beginning and end of the
quotation
e Write the quotation exactly as it appears in the
original
@ Do not use a quotation that repeats what you have
just written
e Use the quotation so that it fits into your sentence
© Keep the quotation as short as possible
Quotations should be used to develop the line of
thought in your essays.
Your comment should not duplicate what is in your
| quotation. For example:
Rita tells Frank that she couldn't go to the dinner party because
she had bought the wrong sort of wine ‘I couldn't. I’d bought the
wrong sort of wine.’
Far more effective is to write:
Rita explains to Frank that she couldn’t go to the dinner party
because she’d ‘bought the wrong sort of wine’.
Quotations should be used to illustrate points:
Near the end of the play, Frank’s refers to Rita’s decision to buy
a new dress only after passing her exam: ‘It’s erm — well, it’s er
— it’s a dress really. | bought it some time ago for erm — for an
educated woman friend — of mine ...’
However, the most sophisticated way of using the
writer's words is to embed them into your sentence:
Rita’s emotive appraisal of Macbeth as ‘bleedin’ great’ reflects a
freshness of approach that is entirely lacking in Frank’s rather
stilted language.
When you use quotations in this way, you are demon-
strating the ability to use text as evidence to support
your ideas - not simply including words from the
original to prove you have read it.

4 59
Essay WRITING

Everyone writes differently. Work through the

suggestions given here and adapt the advice to suit
your own style and interests. This will improve your
essay-writing skills and allow your personal voice to
emerge.
The following points indicate in ascending order the
skills of essay writing:
e Picking out one or two facts about the story and
adding the odd detail
Writing about the text by retelling the story
Retelling the story and adding a quotation here and
there
e Organising an answer which explains what is
happening in the text and giving quotations to
support what you write
nee eee m enna e renee ee nese eee nee sees ee ee eee ee ee eeeeses EE eeeeaEeess see eeeeessseees

@ Writing in such a way as to show that you have

thought about the intentions of the writer of the
text and that you understand the techniques used
e Writing at some length, giving your viewpoint on the
text and commenting by picking out details to
support your views
Looking at the text as a work of art, demonstrating
clear critical judgement and explaining to the reader
of your essay how the enjoyment of the text is
assisted by literary devices, linguistic effects and
psychological insights; showing how the text relates
to the time when it was written
The dotted line above represents the division
between lower and higher level grades. Higher-level
performance begins when you start to consider your
response as a reader of the text. The highest level is
reached when you offer an enthusiastic personal
response and show how this piece of literature is a
product of its time.

60 V
STUDY SKILLS EssAy WRITING

Coursework _ Set aside an hour or so at the start of your work to plan

essay what you have to do.
@ List all the points you feel are needed to cover the
task. Collect page references of information and
quotations that will support what you have to say. A
helpful tool is the highlighter pen: this saves
painstaking copying and enables you to target
precisely what you want to use.
@ Focus on what you consider to be the main points of
the essay. Try to sum up your argument in a single
sentence, which could be the closing sentence of your
essay. Depending on the essay title, it could be a
statement about a character: Rita’s changing character
is reflected in her different ways of speaking, and her
partial return to her original accent and dialect
suggests a newly acquired confidence within herself;
an opinion about setting: Frank’s cluttered office
reflects his own feelings of chaos and despair; or a
judgement on a theme: I think that, although the
title of the play is ‘Educating Rita’, it is obvious that
Frank learns a lot too.
@ Make a short essay plan. Use the first paragraph to
introduce the argument you wish to make. In the
following paragraphs develop this argument with
details, examples and other possible points of view.
Sum up your argument in the last paragraph. Check
you have answered the question.
@ Write the essay, remembering all the time the central
point you are making.
© On completion, go back over what you have written
to eliminate careless errors and improve expression.
Read it aloud to yourself, or, if you are feeling more
confident, to.a relative or friend.
If you can, try to type your essay, using a word
processor. This will allow you to correct and improve
your writing without spoiling its appearance.

V4 61
EsSsAY WRITING STUDY SKILLS

Examination The essay written in an examination often carries more

essay marks than the coursework essay even though it is
written under considerable time pressure.
In the revision period build up notes on various aspects
of the text you are using. Fortunately, in acquiring this
set of York Notes on Educating Rita, you have made a
prudent beginning! York Notes are set out to give you
vital information and help you to construct your
personal overview of the text.
Make notes with appropriate quotations about the key
issues of the set text. Go into the examination knowing
your text and having a clear set of opinions about it.
In most English Literature examinations you can take
in copies of your set books. This is an enormous
advantage although it may lull you into a false sense of
security. Beware! There is simply not enough time in an
examination to read the book from scratch.
In the © Read the question paper carefully and remind
examination yourself what you have to do.
© Look at the questions on your set texts to select the
one that most interests you and mentally work out
the points you wish to stress.
© Remind yourself of the time available and how you
are going to use it.
© Briefly map out a short plan in note form that will
keep your writing on track and illustrate the key
argument you want to make.
e Then set about writing it.
@ When you have finished, check through to eliminate
errors.

To summarise, e Know the text

these are the e Have a clear understanding of and opinions on the storyline,
keys to success: characters, setting, themes and writer’s concerns
e Select the right material
e Plan and write a clear response, continually bearing the question
in mind

62 V
SAMPLE ESSAY PLAN

A typical essay question on Educating Rita is followed

by a sample essay plan in note form. This does not
present the only answer to the question, merely one
answer. Do not be afraid to include your own ideas and
leave out some of the ones in this sample! Remember
that quotations are essential to prove and illustrate the
points you make.
Examine Frank’s growing sense of unease as Rita
becomes more educated.
Part 1: Establish that in the early scenes, it is Frank who is in
Introduction control. Look at his use of language and compare it to
the way Rita speaks, showing how this partly prevents
her from being fully accepted in Frank’s world.
Part 2: Look closely at Rita’s change in character in Act II
Rita’s Scene 1, after attending the summer school. She tells
growing Frank that she has already ‘done’ Blake. Other lecturers
confidence | besides Frank have begun to have a bearing on her
development. Rita also mentions Trish, who has
become another influence in her life. Give examples.
Part 3: Look at Frank’s reaction when Rita is invited to go to
Frank’s France with Tiger and his friends. Are the reasons he
Jealousy gives for her not going simply excuses? Consider the
way he treats Rita when she tries to change her way of
speaking (Act II Scene 2). He implores, ‘Rita! Just be
yourself’. Is he failing to understand that Rita does not
want to be ‘herself’, and that she is trying to escape her
situation by becoming educated?
Part 4: - Consider the way Frank becomes appalled at what he
Rita’s has created in Rita. Why does he liken himself to Mary
‘uniqueness’ Shelley who wrote the novel Frankenstein? He feels that
disappears she has changed, and not for the better, saying that
when she writes, ‘there’s nothing of you in there’.
When she is late for a tutorial, he asks, ‘perhaps you
don’t want to waste your time coming here any more?’
Is this a sign of Frank’s own insecurity?

Y 63
FURTHER QUESTIONS STUDY SKILLS

Part 5: Reflect on the final scene and how both characters seem
Conclusion to have come to terms with themselves and appear to be
more settled, despite the fact that neither of them is
sure what the future holds. Think about Frank’s present
of the dress. Does this symbolise his acceptance that
Rita has matured into an educated woman?

FURTHER QUESTIONS
1 What does Rita gain from her ‘education’ and what
does she lose?
2 Compare and contrast the way Rita and Frank use
language throughout Educating Rita.
3 Rita describes herself as a ‘half-caste’ (Act I
Scene 7), neither fitting comfortably into her own
society or that of Frank. How appropriate would it
be to describe Frank in that way?
4 Look closely at Act I Scenes 6-7. Explain why
Frank invites Rita to dinner and, ultimately, why
she fails to turn up.
5 Explore Willy Russell’s use of humour in the play.
6 Although Educating Rita is a comedy, Willy Russell
develops a number of serious issues in the play.
Select those issues which you feel are most
important and examine his treatment of them in
detail.
7 This play is about educating Rita. Frank also learns
a lot about himself, but what have you learned from
the play?
8 Is the play still as relevant today as it was when it
was first written?
9 Select the three scenes in the play which you find
most dramatic and explain why they are so
powerful.
10 As the director of the play, what ideas would you
want to put across to the audience and how would
you ensure that you were successful?

VY
PaRT FIVE

( 'ULTURAL CONNECTIONS

BROADER PERSPECTIVES
Shirley Compare Educating Rita with Shirley Valentine, another
Valentine play written by Willy Russell. Both plays have women
as their central characters and they both share a
common desire to alter their mundane lives.
Cinema Both plays have been adapted for cinema, and it is also
adaptations worth comparing them on this basis. Consider the
textual changes and additions which have been made by
the film-makers. How is the art of the director different
to that of the playwright (see Literary Terms)?
Texts within The text of Educating Rita refers to a wide range of
the text texts which are well worth studying in their own right.
The plays of Henrik Ibsen and the novels of E.M.
Forster are two such examples. Or, if you are interested
_ in poetry, why not compare the works of William Blake
with the contemporary Liverpool poet Roger
McGough?
Pygmalion Another text which has parallels with Educating Rita is
the play by George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion (also a
study guide in this York Notes series). First produced in
1914 and later screened as the film My Fair Lady, it
tells the story of a poor flower girl called Eliza Doolittle
who is taken in by Professor Higgins, an expert in
linguistics. He teaches her to speak ‘properly’ and, just
like Rita, she is transformed into an entirely different
character.
Frankenstein In Educating Rita, Frank compares himself to
Frankenstein, the man from Mary Shelley’s novel of the
same name, who created a monster. The novel charts
the attempts of'a scientist who tries to create a human
being and bring it to life, but the ‘monster’ becomes
uncontrollable. It is worth considering, therefore, how
far you agree with Frank’s analogy (see Literary
Terms)?

VY 65
[_ITERARY TERMS

analogy to suggest a likeness between setting the place where the action on
two things stage is set
antithesis opposing or contrasting ideas stage directions advice printed in the text
assonance the repitition of vowel sounds of a play giving instructions or
dialect accent and vocabulary which information about the movements,
varies due to social and regional gestures and appearance of the actors,
background or on the special effects required at a
irony this consists of saying one thing particular moment in the action
while you mean another, often through structure the way a work of literature has
understatement, concealment or indirect been pieced together, a framework
statement symbolism the practice of using symbols
metaphor an image where something is to represent something else
described as being something else, not theme a repeated idea which has a
to be read literally prominent place in the play
naturalistic in Drama, referring to the tragedy a serious play which ends in
staging of a play which is essentially misfortune
realistic unity relating to the classical unities
parody a deliberately exaggerated which governed the structure of plays,
imitation for example the unity of place which
playwright the writer of a play proposed that stage action should be
plot the storyline or main narrative limited to one set in order to make the
thread play more realistic

66 V
‘TEST ANSWERS

Test yourseLF (Act IScenes 1-4) TEST YOURSELF (Act II Scenes 1-3)
Al Roger McGough 1 Trish
** 2 Rita Mae Brown *** 2 Tiger
3 E.M. Forster 3 The university authorities
4 Henrik Ibsen 4 Frank’s regular students

Test yourseLF (Act II Scenes 4—7)

Test yoursetr (Act I Scenes 5-8) 1 The students Rita meets at the
‘ooo
1 Denny bistro
°°? 9 Julia 2 Frank, talking about his own poetry
3 Macbeth 3 Trish
4 Rita’s mother 4 Rita

v 67
iE
 i rf,

om
F
‘ ae
 ITLES IN THE YORK NOTES SERIES

GCSE and equivalent levels (£3.50 each)

Maya Angelou Susan Hill William Shakespeare
I Know Why the Caged Bird I'm the King of the Castle A Midsummer Night's Dream
Sings Barry Hines William Shakespeare
Jane Austen A Kestrel for a Knave The Merchant of Venice
Pride and Prejudice William Shakespeare
Louise Lawrence
Harold Brighouse Children of the Dust Romeo and Juliet
Hobson’s Choice William Shakespeare
Harper Lee
Charlotte Bronté To Kill a Mockingbird The Tempest
Jane Eyre William Shakespeare
Laurie Lee
Emily Bronté Twelfth Night
Cider with Rosie
Wuthering Heights George Bernard Shaw
Charles Dickens Arthur Miller Pygmalion
David Copperfield A View from the Bridge
R.C. Sherriff
Charles Dickens Arthur Miller Journey's End
Great Expectations The Crucible Rukshana Smith
Charles Dickens Robert O’Brien Salt on the snow
Hard Times Z for Zachariah John Steinbeck
George Eliot George Orwell Of Mice and Men
Silas Marner Animal Farm R.L. Stevenson
William Golding J.B. Priestley Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Lord ofthe Flies An Inspector Calls Robert Swindells
Willis Hall Willy Russell Daz 4 Zoe
The Long and the Short and the Educating Rita Mildred D. Taylor
Tall Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
Willy Russell
Thomas Hardy Our Day Out Mark Twain
Far from the Madding Crowd The Adventures ofHuckleberry
J.D. Salinger
Thomas Hardy Finn
The Catcher in the Rye
The Mayor of Casterbridge James Watson
Thomas Hardy William Shakespeare Talking in Whispers
Tess ofthe d'Urbervilles Henry V A Choice ofPoets
L.P. Hartley William Shakespeare Nineteenth Century Short
The Go-Between Julius Caesar Stories
Seamus Heaney William Shakespeare Poetry ofthe First World War
Selected Poems Macbeth Six Women Poets

Advanced level (£3.99 each)

Margaret Atwood F. Scott Fitzgerald William Shakespeare
The Handmaia’s Tale The Great Gatsby The Merchant of Venice
William Blake Thomas Hardy William Shakespeare
Songs ofInnocence and of Tess of the d’'Urbervilles Romeo and Juliet
Experience James Joyce William Shakespeare
Emily Bronté Dubliners The Tempest
Wuthering Heights Arthur Miller Mary Shelley
Geoffrey Chaucer Death ofa Salesman Frankenstein
The Wife ofBath's Prologue and William Shakespeare Alice Walker
Tale Antony and Cleopatra The Color Purple
Joseph Conrad William Shakespeare Tennessee Williams
Heart ofDarkness Hamlet A Streetcar Named Desire
Charles Dickens William Shakespeare
Great Expectations King Lear

V 75
PorTHcomING TITLES IN THE SERIES

Jane Austen William Shakespeare

Emma Much Ado About Nothing
Jane Austen William Shakespeare
Pride and Prejudice Othello
Charlotte Bronté John Webster
Jane Eyre The Duchess ofMalft
Seamus Heaney
Selected Poems

76 V
Porvre TITLES IN THE YORK NOTES SERIES

Chinua Achebe Emily Dickinson James Joyce

Things Fall Apart Selected Poems A Portrait ofthe Artist as a
Edward Albee John Donne Young Man
Who's Afraid of Virginia Selected Poems John Keats
Woolf? Douglas Dunn Selected Poems
Jane Austen Selected Poems Philip Larkin
Mansfield Park George Eliot Selected Poems
Jane Austen Middlemarch D.H. Lawrence
Northanger Abbey George Eliot The Rainbow
Jane Austen The Mill on the Floss D.H. Lawrence
Persuasion T.S. Eliot Sons and Lovers
Jane Austen The Waste Land D.H. Lawrence
Sense and Sensibility T.S. Eliot Women in Love
Samuel Beckett Selected Poems Christopher Marlowe
Waiting for Godot Henry Fielding Doctor Faustus

Alan Bennett Joseph Andrews John Milton

Talking Heads E.M. Forster Paradise Lost Bks I && IT

John Betjeman Howards End John Milton

Selected Poems E.M. Forster Paradise Lost IV & IX

Robert Bolt
A Passage to India Sean O’Casey
John Fowles Juno and the Paycock
A Man for All Seasons
The French Lieutenant's George Orwell
Robert Burns
Woman Nineteen Eighty-four
Selected Poems
Brian Friel John Osborne
Lord Byron Translations Look Back in Anger
Selected Poems
Elizabeth Gaskell Wilfred Owen
Geoffrey Chaucer North and South Selected Poems
The Franklin’s Tale
Oliver Goldsmith Harold Pinter
Geoffrey Chaucer She Stoops to Conquer The Caretaker
The Merchant's Tale
Graham Greene Sylvia Plath
Geoffrey Chaucer Brighton Rock Selected Works
The Miller's Tale
Thomas Hardy Alexander Pope
Geoffrey Chaucer Jude the Obscure Selected Poems
The Nun’s Priest's Tale Thomas Hardy Jean Rhys
Geoffrey Chaucer Selected Poems Wide Sargasso Sea
Prologue to the Canterbury Nathaniel Hawthorne William Shakespeare
Tales The Scarlet Letter As You Like It
Samuel Taylor Coleridge Ernest Hemingway William Shakespeare
Selected Poems The Old Man and the Sea Coriolanus
Daniel Defoe Homer William Shakespeare
Moll Flanders The Iliad Henry IV Pt 1
Daniel Defoe Homer William Shakespeare
Robinson Crusoe The Odyssey Henry V
Shelagh Delaney Aldous Huxley William Shakespeare
A Taste ofHoney Brave New World Julius Caesar
Charles Dickens Ben Jonson William Shakespeare
Bleak House The Alchemist Measure for Measure
Charles Dickens Ben Jonson William Shakespeare
Oliver Twist Volpone Much Ado About Nothing

V 77
furore TITLES (continued)

William Shakespeare Muriel Spark Derek Walcott

A Midsummer Night’s Dream The Prime ofMiss Jean Brodie Selected Poems
William Shakespeare John Steinbeck Oscar Wilde
Richard IT The Grapes of Wrath The Importance ofBeing
William Shakespeare John Steinbeck Earnest
Richard IIT The Pearl Tennessee Williams
William Shakespeare Tom Stoppard Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Sonnets Rosencrantz and Guildenstern T Will:
ai ennessee ams
William Shakesp ES are Dead The Glass Menagerie
The Taming ofthe Shrew Jonathan Swift Sina
William Shakespeare Gulliver’s Travels ae
The Winter's Tale John Millington Synge perpen
George Bernard Shaw The Playboy of the Western Virginia Woolf
hein World To the Lighthouse
George Bernard Shaw W.M. Thackeray William Wordsworth
Saint Joan Vanity Fair Selected Poems
Richard Brinsley Sheridan Virgil W.B. Yeats
The Rivals The Aeneid Selected Poems

78 YY
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