Act 2 scenes 2 & 3: Rita's complete make over

Up to this point in the play, we have seen how Rita has developed into a more sophisticated person (according to social standards, mind you! ;-) ) She has now almost achieved her objective of discovering her true self, of seeing life in a different light... but Frank does not feel comfortable with her new self. As said in the previous post, he feels threatened by Rita's new independence, by this new criteria she has, by the way she speaks her mind confidently! Rita is able to sit down with "proper students" on the lawn and discussed poetry! This is a huge success for her... but it turns Frank even more insecure and jealous to the point that he goes to teach being drunk! rita is ready to fly and to try new things by herself but Frank is not ready to let her go... once more this kind of situation rings a bell in our lives as teachers! How generous one has to be to teach and to feel proud and pleased to see our students going places we have never been! How open minded to be ready to listen carefully to them to keep on learning! How wise to let them go when we know there is nothing else we can give them but our admiration and friendship! I hope Frank realises this before the play finishes!

Rita's back!

Rita is back from summer school with a whole new experience under her belt! She has changed a lot from that first shy, insecure student who started to attend lessons with a tutor... She is now living with a friend in her own flat, she now sees life from a totally different perspective and she loves it! This change takes place not only outside, i.e. she wears new clothes, has a new hair style, but also inside: she feels a whole new person and she says so! Frank is happy to see her back: he feels happy about her new look but quite hesitant about her other changes: Rita wants to experience new things together with him, to a point Frank feels threatened as when she insists that he gives up drinking or when she wants to open a window because "a room is like a plant: it needs air..." But what air does Rita refer to? This new air that has changed her completely? The kind of air that will change Frank and will turn him in the man she wants? Even when Frank starts looking for a great poet for her and finds out that Rita has already studied Blake we can perceive a certain frustration in both of them: in Rita because Frank is not offering her those new things she wants to learn; in Frank because he apparently has nothing to offer to Rita... How many times do we have this same feeling as both teachers and students? How many times do we feel that we cannot offer our students more than what we have already offer? I will leave the question open...

Act 1 scenes 7 & 8: Rita's awakening

Up to this point in the play, we have witnessed a huge change both in Rita and Frank. Frank opened his mind to a totally different world, i.e., teaching an adult from the working class. In this thorough task he had to leave aside lots of prejudices, like going with Rita to see an amateur performance at the local church! :-) He really likes Rita, probably beyond the teacher-student relationship they are supposed to have... but we need to remember that beyond these labels, they are human beings!
As for Rita, she is determined to achieve her goal. She will fight against all odds, even against her husband who she chooses to walk on. She is going through a moment in her life in which she does not know where she belongs to: she feels uneasy drinking beer at the pub with her husband, mother and friends, yet, at the same time, she does not feel ready to interact with "educated" people, such as Frank's wife and friends! This is probably why she could not ring the bell at Frank's house when he invited her for dinner or why she decided to keep on studying despite her husband's opposition. Rita feels moved by her mother's words at the pub while they were singing: "we could sing better songs than those," in a way she can see what her mother means: there is more to life than just conforming to what one already has, there is a moment in which one's urge for knowledge, or self-actualization in Maslow's terms, is stronger than any obstacle one can find in one's way... I simpathise with Rita, I can understand how she feels: I cannot picture life without studying, without satisfying my thirst for knowledge... I would not feel entirely human!

Act 1 scene 6

Rita keeps on trying to find out what the world has to offer. She goes to the theatre on her own and Alas! she loves it! She hasn't chosen any given play, but Macbeth... she's so fascinated with the plot that she wants to write an essay on the play... though first she'll have to stop to think what she wants to say. Rita finds in her own language many expressions to describe how she feels towards the play, words she'd never be able to use in an academic paper! She's so pleased with the world that is unfolding before her that she finds it difficult to explain exactly how she feels...
Her relationship with Frank continues to develop in such a way that she goes to see him on a day she's not supposed to just to tell him about her experience! They're beginnig to trust each other, they even want to spend more time together doing different activities: going for lunch, going to the art gallery and the like. Frank is enthusiastic about Rita's interest in literature and even explains the difference between a tragedy, from the point of view of literature, and a tragic event in real life... Rita takes for granted that "proper" students know all about that... she still looks up to them because they know better than her. But Rita's eagerness to discover this new world takes over her whole self and leads her to explore this world the way a newly-born human being does it...

Act 1 scene 5

Rita begins to be aware what a big change studying entails: little by little she's opening her mind to new experiences, she starts to feel more alive than ever! She's getting to know this new Rita, her "own version of herself..." And she likes it! Though at times she feels selfish about it, she realizes that what she needs now is to be in touch with her new self... Up to now she's behaved in the way everybody expected her to behave, she's worked and after work been to the pub with her husband and family... Rita knows that there's more to life than that and is willing to discover what it is with Frank's help... She continues studying despite Denny's attempt to prevent her from doing so, she feels that nobody can stop her, not even Frank when he invites her to stop talking about Chekhov and go to the pub!! He doesn's realize that what Rita precisely doesn't want is to go on leading the life she's led up to now! She wants to see what there is beyond the pub, what the theatre has to teach her, what authors have to tell her about life, she wants a fresh new start and is determined to pursue her objective...

Act 1 Scenes 3 and 4

Rita's first encounter with academic writing is not as good as she had expected... Her essay is far from what examiners want from students. Rita does not know how to support her views in the paper, she believes she knows better than examiners because she has read something they have not... she needs to develop a certain criteria when reading and Frank will help her do so. But this new criteria will not only help her when writing for an audience but also in most other aspects of her life. Rita struggles every time she has to go to her lessons against her family, partner and friends: her partner, especially, does not want to let her go there... he is afraid of Rita's opportunity of opening her mind, of seeing other reality than the one she is used to, of losing her... Rita tries to continue with her course against all odds... By the end of scene 4, we can see that she is succeeding, she is achieving her objective...

Act 1 Scene 2

When Rita gets into Frank's room, she is in a different world; she can see what she expects to achieve by studying, i.e., to develop "good taste," to become somebody different from who she actually is. Though she did not have the chance to become a regular student since it was frown upon by those who surrounded her (and even herself!), she enjoys looking at them, watching or imagining how their lives differ from hers. In a way, Rita idealizes both Frank and regular students: she looks up to them as they have succeeded in doing something she did not: academic life. And this is a contradiction in itself insofar as up to this moment she has been part of a social class who regards academic people as posh, as detached from "real life..." Will Rita change her mind as to what "being educated" implies? Will she try to continue studying in spite of her prejudices? I hope my questions have an answer by the end of the play!