Educating Rita, written by Willy Russell, is a play about Rita, a working class hairdresser who yearns for a change in her life and to be better educated; also it is about a dissipated literature professor who tutors Rita to earn some extra money.

Many of the changes in the play occur mainly due to the ways Rita and Frank interact and change each other. In ways this play is about many aspects that centralise on choice, culture, priorities and education. There can be many different reader responses to the play and what it is about but I will compare these with authorial intention. From this I will conclude whether this play is mainly about how education changed Rita for the better, and in what ways has it had a negative effect and what has getting to know Rita taught Frank.

At first Rita is uneducated. Her background is the working class, but she wants to change her life for a better way of living. She has the will to learn very hard and she wants to reach her aims. Here we see Frank confronted by Rita whom is a pupil wanting nothing more or less than a total education e.g. Frank asks, "What can I teach you?" and Rita replies, "Everything." Later on she se

At the beginning he finds himself faced with an unexpectedly fresh and uncluttered mind. Rita tests Frank's intellectual talents to the full, by requiring constant justification and explanation of statements that would usually be taken for granted and accepted in a conversation between a student and a tutor. Frank is intrigued by her freshness in Act One Scene One showing that what Rita possesses is individuality, "I think you're the first breath of air that's been in this room for years." But to his dismay she comes near to losing her identity at the end.

One example is when Rita constantly questions Franks drinking and tells him its bad for him, this way it seems a subtle way of saying stop drinking although Frank is objectionable saying that Rita cannot reform him. "It'll kill y', Frank...just that I thought you'd started reforming yourself." Frank replies, "Under your influence? Yes Rita-if I repent and reform, what do I do when your influence is no longer her?"

By the end of the play Rita, having a mind trained to think although losing her originality, has acquired a confidence that allows her to make her own decisions and she has a wider choice of direction, "I dunno, I might go to France. I might go to me mothers. I might even go to France. I might even have a baby. I'll make a decision. I'll choose." She is now presented with choice, which is what she wanted at the beginning.

ems to think that she has acquired and learnt everything. "I've got what you got Frank, and you don't like it."

It is also visible that Rita is beginning to fit in with the other students because she stops on her way to the tutorial to talk to students on the lawn. "I started to talk to students on the lawn." This then proves that she may have become over-confident because she said to the student that his opinion was wrong. "...I heard one of them saying that as a novel he preferred 'Lady Chatterly' to 'Sons and Lovers.' I thought, I can keep on walking an' ignore it, or I can put him straight." At the beginning Rita seemed to have assumed that there was a boundary between educated people and the working-class society. She used to be intimidated by them. "You used to be quite wary of them."

It is also visible that not everything in Rita has changed because her decisions are still almost the same. "I know what clothes to wear, what wine to buy, what plays to see and what papers and books to read. I can do without you." Before she didn't know what to wear and wine to buy and so on.

Some common words found in the essay are:
Scene Rita, Tiger Trish, TS Elliot, Trish Rita, EM Forster, Yes Rita-if, Frank Rita, Frank-I I've, Rita Frank, Willy Russell, rita changed, act scene, rita beginning, play rita, summer school, talk students lawn, visible rita, rita change, priorities education, rita frank, changes play, wear wine buy, rita losing individuality, act scene rita, running five minutes,
Approximate Word count = 2033
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)