Educating Rita

ACT ONE

Scene One:

Frank is going up and down the bookshelves trying to remember where he had put a bottle of whisky. FinaIly he rernemberes having put it behind the Dickens section and reveals the bottle. Suddenly the phone rings and startles him slightly. On the phone there is his girl-friend, who tells him that he will get a burned dinner when he comes home too late. The woman on the telephone moreover questions him why he has to stay at university and Frank replies that he is waiting for an Open University woman. When there is a knock at the door, Frank puts down the receiver and calls for the visitor to come in. Rita, the Open University woman, enters. First they talk about a picture that hangs on the wall of Frank's study and then about the book ,,Howard's End" by E.M. Forster, that Rita considers filthy and which he lends her.

However, Rita also informs Frank why she came there. She says that she wants to know everything. She tells Frank that she is a twenty-six year old womens' hairdresser, that she has changed her name from Susan White into Rita and that everyone, but especially her husband, expects her to have a baby. She mentions that she has already realized for ages that she was slightly out of step. Rita moreover asserts that she doesn't want to become pregnant and have a baby. She wants to discover herself first and change from the inside. Moreover she says that she has tried to explain to her husband that she wants a better way of living, but that he cannot understand her. Rita then asks Frank when he will start teaching her, but he claims that she wants to know a lot and that he cannot give her that. He says: ,,Everything I know is that I know absolutely nothing.", and declares that he will arrange it that she will get another tutor. Rita, however, doesn't agree. She will have him as her tutor and finally Frank asks her if she is really dead serious about wanting to learn and after Rita has answered his question in the affirmative, Frank states that it depends on her and how committed she is to change, whether she'll succeed or not. Besides: He says to Rita: ,,You are the first breath of air that has been in this room for years."

Scene Two:

Frank is in his study glancing at his watch all the time when suddenly the door handle turns but doesn't open. Therefore he walks to the door and pulls it open. Rita is standing in front of him and finally walks in. She informs Frank that she loves his study. In her opinion the untidyness in Frank's room reflects his personality. ,,lt's a perfect mess, but I love it."

Moreover she tells Frank that when she was going to school, she was never meant to admit that school would be anything than useless. One had to be interested in music and fashion as well as looking for a feller then. A deeper voice, however, always told her that she might have got it all wrong, but in order to displace these feelings, she always went out and bought another record or dress. She kept telling herself that life is great for ages until she decided to get an education.

Then, they begin to learn. Frank teaches Rita that criticism is purely objective and that in criticism sentiment has no place. But they also start discussing ,,Howard's End", a book that Rita doesn't like at all, because Forster wrote ,,We are not concerned with the poor." and because he claims that he couldn't care less. For that reason Frank teaches Rita that one cannot interpret a book from a Marxist viewpoint. Moreover she was sentimental and subjective, because she wanted Forster to concern himself with the poor. Rita, however, disturbs his speech regularly, because she wants to get to know whether Frank is married or not. Frank tells her that he lives with an ex-student of him, who is called Julia and who is very caring, tolerant and who admires him enormously.

Nevertheless, Rita criticizes that teachers always try to tum a conversation into a lesson.

At the end of this scene, Rita asks Frank if Forster's repeated use of ,,only connect" suggests that he was really a frustrated electrician. (Forster uses this phrase to suggest the importance of human beings understanding each other. Rita assumes ,,connect" has something to do with electricity.)

Scene Three:

When Rita enters Frank's study, Frank waves a sheet of paper at her. He asks her whether her essay on E.M. Forster is meant to be a joke. When Rita replies that it shouldn't be a joke, he tells her that she has to be selective in choosing her literature. He states that he remembers saying ,,Reference to other authors will impress the examiners", but that he didn't mean that she should bring in authors of pulp fiction, because mentioning this sort of fiction books doesn't prove that she is well read. Moreover he asserts that she seems to be wider the impression that all books are literature. However, when she promises never to read such a pulp fiction novel again, Frank tells her to read this sort of literature if she wants to, but not to mention such books in an exam.

Scene Four:

Rita tells Frank that she cannot understand the meaning of Forster's ,,only connect", although she tried to manage very intensively. Frank, however, asks her why she did her last essay on ,,Peer Gynt" that briefly. When she states that she had too little time, because she was very busy in the shop (she doesn't work at home, because her husband Danny dislikes that very much), Frank claims that she cannot go on producing work as thin as this. He says that her idea, that she wrote down in just one line, is just the basis for an argument. He tells her that there is a way of answering examination questions that is expected and that she has to observe those rules. (A clever answer isn't necessarily the correct one.) He states that Rita should try to add some considered argument to her essay and that she should try to outline her reasons by supporting them as much as possible with quotes frorn accepted authorities. However, before starting her work, Rita talks with Frank about the world culture. After she has stopped telling him her ideas he informs her that in her speech she has done connections and suddenly Rita realizes the meaning of Forster's ,,only connect". In his book nobody connects, that is all it means. Then she finishes her essay on Peer Gynt and reads it aloud to Frank.

Scene Five:

When Rita turns up, Frank asks her for her essay immediately. Rita, however, tells him that she is dead sorry but that Danny has burnt her essay as well as all the Chekhov books he has lent her, because he found out that she was on the pill again. She is completely uneasy and states that even if she was having an affair (-as Frank assumes that Danny could believe that his wife is having an affair with him-) there is no point in burning her books. She claims that she knows that he wonders where the girl he married has gone, but that she will not change again.She has begun to find herself and that fact rnakes her feel happy. In her opinion Danny only wants to take life away from her by having a baby. For that reason Frank offers Rita that they could give the class a miss for tonight, but Rita states that she wants to know something about Chekhov. She cannot understand why everyone is going on about Chekliov being a comic genious, although his play is very sad and tragic in her opinion.

But they also talk about why Frank stopped being a poet. He states that he spent instead of creating poetry years and years trying to create literature. (Poets shouldn't believe in literature.) Moreover Frank asks Rita if she has ever been to the theatre and when she answers in the negative he recommends her going there. Rita decides to go there that night and tries to convince him of accompanying her, which he finally does. (They watch an amateur production.)

Scene Six:

Frank sits in his study listening to the radio when suddenly Rita bursts through the door. She tells Frank that she went to the theatre last night and that she was quite surprised, because it was great and

fantastic and not at all boring as she expected. They talk about the Shakespeare tragedy ,,MacBeth", Rita has watched. Frank informs Rita that a tragic event has nothing to do with the tragedy of the drama. There is a difference in meaning. Tragedy in dramatic terms is inevitable and pre-ordained. Rita asks him to come to the art gallery with her the next day and Frank invites her and Danny to come over to his house for dinner on Saturday.

Scene Seven:

Frank is very angry because Rita didn't come to dinner. Rita apologises for not coming to dinner at Frank's house. She tells him that her husband went mad when she told him about the invitation. She, however, decided to go, but all day Saturday she thought of what to wear and what to talk about and finally she recognized that all jumbled up in her head. She walked to his house but couldn't come in. Frank tells her that he just wanted her to come and that his guests would have seen someone who is funny, delightful and sharming, if she had turned up. Rita, however, asserts that she thought she would give all a laugh because she definitely believes she can learn, because she thinks that one day she will be like the rest of them, talking seriously, confidently, with knowledge, living a civilized life. Moreover she admits having thought of never coming to class again. She feels like a half-caste, because she belongs neither to the people she has always lived with nor to the kind of people at Frank's party. Frank claims that he only wished her company and that if she doesn't believe this, she should consult an analyst who can cope with paranoia. (Rita cannot taIk to the peeple she lives with any longer - after the happening with her mother, who says: ,,We could sing better songs than those" (page 46), Rita decides to get on with her class.)

Scene Eight:

Rita enters Frank's study carrying a suitcase. He asks her about it and Rita informs him that when she got home from work, her husband had packed her case. He told her either to stop coming to the course and come off the pill or to get out altogether. Moreover he accused her of having betrayed him and told her that there is a time of education and that it's not when you are twenty-six and married.. Rita claims that she will stay at her mother's until she finds a flat.

Frank and Rita talk about Rita's MacBeth essay, which Frank considers as a totally honest, passionate account of her reactions to a play. But he also asserts that although it is in its own term wonderful, she will not pass an exam with such a piece of work. Rita states that she wants to write proper essays and that she wants him to teach her that. Frank, however, believes that if she is going to write this sort of thing to pass examinations, she probably has to suppress, peihaps to abandon her uniqueness, because he has to change her. Rita states that she wants to change with all her heart. (She throws the essay in the dustbin saying:"So we dump that in the bin and we start again.")

ACT TWO

Scene One:

Rita, who has just come home from summer school visits Frank in order to give him a present she has brought from London. She says that she did a lot of work in summer school and that she asked a lot of questions all week in front of about two thousand people. She asks him about France, where he has been on holiday and suddenly Frank informs her that Julia has left him but that she is back again. Rita asks whether he wrote some poetry during his holiday, which he answers in affirmative.

Later this day Rita questions Frank what they are going to do this term and suggests having the tutorial down on the grass. Frank, however, points this proposal out by saying that he has an aversion to sunlight. Frank searches for a book from a good poet, which Rita asked him to do, when Rita suddenly sees a bottle of whisky. She asks him whether he is still on this stuff and he replies that he never said he wasn't. (He wonders what would happen if he repents and reforms and her influence is no longer there.) Frank handles her a book by William Blake, the book he has searched for, but Rita just says that they have already done Blake at summer school. They have covered all the Songs of Innocence and Experience.

Scene Two:

When they meet, Rita is talking in a peculiar voice. She tells Frank that she has rnerely decided to talk properly, but Frank just demands her to stop talking in that voice, because he will not teach a Dalek (= robot with an electronic voice which remains at one pitch.)

Rita stolps taiking in this peculiar voice and tells him that she has started talking to some students down on the lawn, which she quite enjoyed. (One guy she finished off; another guy invited her to go abroad with them). Frank asks her whether there is a point in working towards an examination if she is going to fall in love (with the student who invited her to go abroad with them) and go abroad. However, Frank informs Rita that her essay is already as good as those of the proper students.

Scene Three:

Rita is sitting in Frank's study reading a heavy tome when suddenly Frank enters. He tells Rita that the students reported him and admits that he fell off the platform twice. However, he doesn't believe that he will lose his job because of that. Rita tells him that it's hardly fair on the students if their lecturer is so pissed that he is falling off the rostum. Then she wants to leave telling him that he is not in any fit state for tutorial, but he holds her back and talks with her about the essay she wrote on a Poet by William Blake (,,The Blossom"). In his opinion this poem is uncomplicated and he doesn't like her interpretation. She wrote that it is a poem about sexuality. He is subjective and doesn't like her to have a mind of her own, but finally Rita informs him that he should stop treating her as though she was the same as when she first walked in, although she understands now. Rita claims: ,,You told me not to have a view. I don't have to go along one hundred per cent with your views on Blake. I can have a mind of rny own!" (Now Rubyfruit Jungle is hardly excellence in her opinion. Frank likes it, he considers it excellent.)

Scene Four:

Rita comes too late in the lesson. Frank consults her with unimportant details like that she hasn't told him that she packed in her job at the hairdresser's and that she works in a bistro now. He claims that he misses the time when she told him everything. Moreover he asks Rita if she would like to stop coming to him, which she answeres with ,,No!". She says that she doesn't want to stop coming at his study, but she reprimands him again to stop drinking. Frank finally gives her some of his poetry and tells her to write an essay on that lot by next week.

However, he also informs Rita that she will sail through the examination anyway.

Scene Five:

Rita tells Frank that his poetry is brilliant and suggests that he should start writing again. In her opinion his poems are witty and full of style. Frank, however, who is in a bad rnood asserts Rita that he has done a fine job on her and that from now on he insists on being known as Mary Shelly. He asks Rita whether she understands this allusion. (He has created the Rita who stands before him and over whom he has lost influence. Mary Shelly wrote the novel ,,Frankenstein", in which the protagonist Victor Frankenstein creates a monster which he cannot control.)

He states that his poetry is worthless, talentless, characterless, pretentious and without style. He tells her that she can recognize the hallmark of literature now and that he cannot bear it any longer. Rita, however, answers that she knows exactly that he cannot bear it that she is educated now, because she has got what he has. Then she tells him that she doesn't need him. Now she knows what clothes to

wear, what wine to buy, what plays to see, what papers and books to read. She claims that she can perfectly do without him. Moreover she tells Frank that she isn't called Rita by anyone except by him any longer.

Scene Six:

Frank telephones at Rita's workplace but because he cannot reach her there he calls at her flat and informs her flatmate Trish that he has entered Rita for her examination and that she should call in for the details.

Scene Seven:

Rita comes back to Frank's study in order to tell him that he is a good teacher. She claims that she knows that he would have liked her not to take the examination, but that she did and passed it, because she had the choice. Frank is packing his things all the time while Rita is talking. He has to go to Australia for two years, otherwise he would have been sacked. He asks Rita if she wants te come with him, but Rita tells him that the student who invited her to go abroad with him and his friends has asked her to go down to France with his mob and that her mother has also invited her for Christmas. She promises to make a decision and then says that all she has ever done was take away from him and that she has never given him anything. Therefore she looks for a pair of scissors and starts cutting Frank's hair. (She already promised him to cut his hair when they first met.)

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