Willie Russell's Educating Rita

Willie Russell's Educating Rita

In this play, Willie Russell has created two extremes of culture and put them together to focus on the differences between them and how these two cultures change as the play develops. Firstly there is Frank with a good job as a teacher and a large house and is well educated, who is contrasted with Rita who has a council house, works as a hairdresser and is not well educated. They first meet when Rita goes to Frank because she wants to be educated. As the play continues, Frank and Rita almost completely exchange roles as they are both unhappy with their culture and want to be more like the other. This play was written in the 1980's where the working, middle and upper classes were still used widely to determine what your culture was and how important you are to the social society at the time.

The theme of culture appears a lot in the play. One of the ways that Willie Russell shows the two distinctly different cultures is how much power the higher classes have over the lower classes. In the play knowledge is shown as a symbol of power. Frank has the superior knowledge over Rita so therefore he also has more power over Rita. But when Rita returns from summer school and is more knowledgeable than Frank because Frank wanted to be more like Rita, so Rita has more power over Frank as she now has the superior knowledge. I think that the swivel chair determines who is most in control over the other person in terms of power and knowledge. At the start of the play Frank is sat in the swivel chair, but once Rita is further educated she sits in the swivel chair. The fact that it is a swivel chair that determines power is significant because it turns around. Much like Frank and Rita as the power turned from being in Frank in to Rita.

Willie Russell also used education to show the two different cultures that Frank and Rita live in. Rita says that she wants to be educated because she wants to know everything as she is not happy being classed as working class. But Denny, Rita's husband, does not want her to change and he does this by burning all of her books. Education also symbolises power as Frank has the power to change is life because he is educated, but Rita wants to become educated so she can change her way of life and culture. Education affects the audiences' interpretations of the play as the two extremes of culture that are Frank and Rita create a very obvious comparison of character. This makes it easier for the audience to see the reversal of roles in the play. This will make them think that the two characters are growing closer together and they may think Frank and Rita will eventually fall in love, until the two characters cross over and keep growing further apart.

Another way that Willie Russell showed the two distinct cultures was by the way that people are judged if they are lower class. When Frank invited Rita to his dinner party, Rita got to the door with a bottle of wine but she didn't go in because she saw all the people inside. She didn't want to go in because she had the wrong sort of wine and wrong dress and was afraid that people would judge her by that. I think Willie Russell did this to get the audience emotionally involved and feel sorry for Rita. This would also show even more of a contrast between the two characters and cultures.

Rita swears a lot and she is seen to be ignorant to show the difference between her and Rita in terms of language and frame of mind. For example Rita shows some ignorance when in the first scene she looks at Franks religious painting on the wall and says "Look at those tits", as well as her swearing a lot. I think Willie Russell did this to show that Rita is working class and uneducated as swearing is acceptable in the working class and she doesn't know any better because she is uneducated and it's acceptable in her society. Whereas Frank doesn't swear because he is educated and knows better and it is not acceptable in his society. This also shows the audience the two different cultures of the two characters at the start of the play without any further information. I think that this is the reason that Frank tries to hide his drinking problem because he is secretly

ashamed of it and it is not acceptable in his society.

As the play moves on and develops further, Rita begins to slowly change her culture as she becomes more and more educated, which gave her more choice and freedom in which to change her culture. This becomes more evident once Rita comes back from summer school. Now Rita has a mind of her own that can think for its self and she can make her own decisions in her life about how she wants to live.