Educating Rita by Willy Russell :: English Literature

Educating Rita Educating Rita is a story written by Willy Russell. He was born in Whiston, which is just outside Liverpool. When he was five his mum and dad moved to Knowsley, on an estate full of Liverpudlians who taught him how to talk properly. It is about two main characters Rita and Frank. Rita is a literature student at the Open University. This is a university that is used as a way of enabling adult students, like Rita. Frank is a tutor at the Open University but unlike the normal upper class tutors frank is a normal scruffy old man, this shocks Rita. Rita wanted to study and learn here, and so the fear and pressure from her friends made her join in with the others around her. She didn't want to become different from her family and friends, nor those around her, and so blocked the thought that she wanted more from her life: "I'd just play another record or buy another dress an' stop worryin" She put this off because of the peer pressure from the other working class people, she didn't want to be different and upset them so went along with their assumptions of women as low, and this put her off for a while. Rita sees the middle class as totally different from herself, and although doesn't want to be working class, doesn't feel she will be accepted as middle class either. She has the idea that all middle class individuals are free, and stereotypes, making sweeping generalisations. She assumes they all eat wholemeal bread, flora, and watch the BBC, as this is seen as more intellectually stimulating than ITV, the channel that many of the working class watch. This shows that she stereotypes certain groups of people from what she has heard, instead of her own views, she doesn't wait to get to know them before judging. As Rita believes herself to be sophisticated and well read, she has named herself after an author. Her real name is Susan, but Rita Mae Brown is a pornographic author, and as Rita likes her books, she laughably adopts her name and believes she is making herself seem more sophisticated, once again showing her complete misunderstanding that sexually explicit novels are classified as good literature. Such an action again indicates her naive outlook and lack of literary awareness at the beginning of the play. There are many themes during the play, change is probably the most important as it shows how an individual can develop and learn in both positive and negative ways, the play indicates the protagonist changing from one extreme to the other, eventually discovering a happy