Clash of Classes and Cultures in Educating Rita

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Clash of Classes and Cultures in Educating Rita

To What Extent Would You Agree That Educating Rita Depicts a Clash

of Classes and Cultures?

'Educating Rita' is a play by Willy Russell, a dramatist recently

turned novelist. 'Educating Rita' contains only two characters, a

young woman called Rita and a middle-aged man called Frank, although

this may sound boring these characters are so interesting that anymore

characters would ruin the ambiance of the play. In the early part of

the play Rita, a hairdresser from north-west England, has started an

Open University course with Frank, a university lecturer in his early

fifties, in order to change herself. Throughout the play Rita becomes

more and more cultured giving up anything that gets in the way of her

education or tries to stop her being the cultured individual she wants

to be.

Rita is a working class woman in her late twenties trying to find

herself through a university education; Frank is a divorced university

professor in his early fifties. Bored of teaching Frank drinks his

life away and has taken on Rita as an Open University student to fund

this habit. These two interesting characters from very different

backgrounds are thrown together and the clashes of class and culture

are depicted in a number of ways. Rita's language is very colloquial

and this, at times, amuses Frank; for example, 'What in the name of

God is being off one's cake.' Her language is both new and puzzling to

Frank as he is used to hearing the generally proper English spoken by

his university students. These phrases seem out of place when issued

by Frank. 'One is obviously very off one's cake,' - 'you can't say

that [Frank].' Frank's sesquipedalian language does not mix with

Ri...

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...etween two classes and cultures.

In the earlier part of the play Rita feels surrounded by an alien

environment, the university and its students, she is nervous and, as a

result, comes across as very loquacious. She sees this in herself when

she says, 'I talk too much' in act one scene one. However, towards the

end of play her speeches are generally shorter. In this new

environment Rita also feels isolated but gradually changes and feels

as though she can interact with the 'real students'. When she finally

does this in act two, scene two it may surprise the audience because

in earlier scenes she describes them as 'real students' as though her

life and their lives cannot mix. But, when she finally does speak to

the student, the first line she tells us she said was, 'Excuse me but

I couldn't help overhearin' the rubbish you were spoutin' about

Lawrence.'

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