Educating Rita :: English Literature

Educating Rita. In the play Educating Rita by Willy Russell we are lead to believe that in the first few scenes Rita and Frank have nothing in common. We assume this on a few small things like the way Rita talks. She is a very out going character who talks like a commoner." you'd better get that bleadin' handle fixed. She hair dresses in a shop and is not happy with the position she is in. She does not have much interest in hair dressing and it does not feel that it is good enough for her. She could do much better. Frank on the other hand is a lecturer at the Open University. He has a bad alcohol problem and only works there to get money for the booze. From what we gather he is not a very good lecturer and is not really all that interested in the job, just the money. He talks not in a posh accent but a smart middle class. Rita perceives her job as a working class hairdresser to be a job that only the lowest of the lowest would do. It is an unsatisfactory job that does not for fill her dream of being a middle class woman. She has the potential to go for what it is that she wants and luckily she knows you to motivate her self to do so. Neither frank nor Rita is really interested in there jobs. They both just do it for the money. This is when we learn that they do have something and common they share the same out looks of there jobs. At the beginning of the play we hear frank talking-to his girlfriend Julia on the phone. She is complaining that he will not be home in time for diner and he is complaining that he wants to go down the pub. This is when we realise that frank is in an unstable relationship with his girlfriend. Due to Rita's nosey personality we find out that Frank was one married but has split up from his wife. When Rita asks why he comments it was "because of literature". When really it was because of his drinking problem, if he is not careful the same thing will happen to him again. Rita finds out that frank use to write poetry and this is why him and his wife split up (or so frank says) Rita then realises that she and frank have another thing in common they both have rocky relationships. Unfortunately Rita's husband Denny has other ideas about what Rita should do with her life.