Educating R|Ita
Educating Rita is a comical play written by Willy Russell in 1982. The play is set in the 1970s where social issues revolving around traditional family values and the roles of men and women are starting to change. The play is based around Rita White who is dissatisfied with her life and wants to transform herself. Throughout the play Rita start to change and realise that education cannot solve everything.
Rita is a twenty six year old, uneducated Liverpool hairdresser. She has decided to enrol on an Open University literary course as she wants to better her life by getting an education. She believes that getting an education will change everything. Growing up she did not get a full education at school as she wanted to fit in with her friends. ‘See, if I’d started takin’ school seriously, I would have had to become different from me mates, an’ that’s not allowed.’ Rita's real name is Susan, but she has named herself after the author Rita Mae Brown. ‘ I’ve called meself Rita- y’know after Rita Mae Brown’ She believes by doing this she is making herself seem more sophisticated, this shows how little she actually understands literature.
When we first meet Rita trying to get through the door, into Frank’s office .At the beginning of the play she struggles to open the door. When she finally manages to enter the room she instantly launches in with a criticism on the door handle needing to be fixed, ‘[i]t’s that stupid bleedin’ handle on the door. You wanna get it fixed.’ This could possibly foreshadow her thirst for an education and how she struggles to understand it at the beginning. In the first scene, Rita’s body language and bubbly personality suggest that she lacks experience in middle-class social settings. Stage directions tell the reader that Rita is admiring a nude painting hanging on Frank’s wall. She calls the painting ‘erotic’ which displays that she does not think before she speaks, that she is not afraid of the consequences and has a tendency to share
Rita is a twenty six year old, uneducated Liverpool hairdresser. She has decided to enrol on an Open University literary course as she wants to better her life by getting an education. She believes that getting an education will change everything. Growing up she did not get a full education at school as she wanted to fit in with her friends. ‘See, if I’d started takin’ school seriously, I would have had to become different from me mates, an’ that’s not allowed.’ Rita's real name is Susan, but she has named herself after the author Rita Mae Brown. ‘ I’ve called meself Rita- y’know after Rita Mae Brown’ She believes by doing this she is making herself seem more sophisticated, this shows how little she actually understands literature.
When we first meet Rita trying to get through the door, into Frank’s office .At the beginning of the play she struggles to open the door. When she finally manages to enter the room she instantly launches in with a criticism on the door handle needing to be fixed, ‘[i]t’s that stupid bleedin’ handle on the door. You wanna get it fixed.’ This could possibly foreshadow her thirst for an education and how she struggles to understand it at the beginning. In the first scene, Rita’s body language and bubbly personality suggest that she lacks experience in middle-class social settings. Stage directions tell the reader that Rita is admiring a nude painting hanging on Frank’s wall. She calls the painting ‘erotic’ which displays that she does not think before she speaks, that she is not afraid of the consequences and has a tendency to share