Frank, a man with some drinking problems, has agreed to tutor a student from the Open University. He's a former poet, but nowadays he's drinking and going to the pub most of the time. The student he's going to tutor is Rita, a 26-year-old married woman from Liverpool. They like each other right away. Rita's husband, Denny, doesn't like Rita getting an education. Rita and Frank mostly talk about famous writers and poets, but also about their lives. Rita is easy to teach; her essays and opinions become more and more advanced. One night Denny burns Rita's books and she decides to move from him. Rita goes to summer school, and when she comes back, she's a lot more mature. Frank doesn't like it and tells Rita that she's far from educated, but Rita does not thing like him and they get into a big fight. At the end of the play Frank apologises and gives Rita a dress that he bought " for an educated woman I know".

Rita and Frank are the only two characters whom we see on stage, though other people are referred to by both of them. We hear about Denny, Rita's husband, about Julia, Frank's partner, and abou

Educating Rita brings to be a certain satisfaction about women education and their prospect for choice. I think something important to gain from the play is that the world over women still suffer in ignorance... They want choice and all of the benefits of education, yet they live without it, denied it because they are not boys. Rita shows us again how important it is for women to be educated and how much more their is to gain from it... We need education, before motherhood so that we can be who we are before we become what we are. It's about choice and Russell's play highlights this. Rita is a role model for choice making women the world over... If we choose education, we can choose anything.

How much he really feels for her becomes clear when he asks her to accompany him on his way to Australia. But Rita has already got her own ideas and plans and is ready to start her new life.

Half way through the play Rita attends a summer school in London and comes back a changed person. She has become much more self- confident and has learned a lot about her subject. Rita has now found the better culture she was seeking for. She has learned to discuss literature in controlled analytic terms and to suppress her passionate reactions. She starts copying the life styles of educated people such as her flatmate Trish. For a while she has given Franks teaching a meaning and a sense of purpose but now the old Rita has practically disappeared and she now longer needs him. Gradually their positions are reversed: Rita turns into an independent academic person, while her tutor is growing more and more dependent on her. Rita is forming other relationships and is hardly showing any interest in his person. Besides she is now more interested in arts and literature than in any other people. Rita's development makes him even more aware of how destructive traditional methods of teaching literature can be. During a quarrel Frank accuses Rita of having found a new superficial culture and that all what she is doing is imitating others. She accuses him and the middle class altogether of preferring the working class to remain uneducated so that they can be patronised. After Rira's exams Frank is packing for Australia when Rita returns to thank him. Finally she realises that he was right after all and that she was so hungry for education and culture that she accepted life styles and opinions of educated people unquestioningly. She now knows that Frank only tried to retain hear honesty and spontaneity. Rita understands now that to lead a more meaningful life she must do more than talk about literature and copy educated people.

We also see a certain lack of confidence in Rita, which is displayed in Act One Scene Seven. In this Scene she doesn't go to Franks dinner because she believes that she wouldn't be able to fit in with the other guests, "An' all the time I'm trying to think of things I can say, what I can talk about." Later on in Act Two Scene One when Rita comes back from after summer she says that she was dead scared when she arrived a summer school. She didn't know anyone and she was going to come home on the first day but she didn't, she had acquired a confidence in herself. The old Rita would have left straight away. A few lines on she mentions that a tutor had approached her and asked her about Ferlinghetti, "...are you fond of Ferlinghetti?' It was right on the tip of me tongue to say, 'Only when it's served with Parmesan cheese.' But, Frank, I didn't." Rita is becoming more reformed, instead of making sarcastic remarks she has started to make interesting conversation when people talk to her but now we come across the fact that she is losing her innocent point of view. There is also a change in the way that she talks, 'Oh, I dunno, I forget now, cos after that I was askin' questions all week, y' couldn't keep me down." Her language is not as bad; she doesn't swear as much as before and is becoming to sound more educated. Also she has stopped sm

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Approximate Word count = 4559
Approximate Pages = 18 (250 words per page double spaced)