Altogether it is a very nice and interesting story, but to me it is not clear if it is a real love story. There are some arguments for and also against this assertion and I cannot come to a clear and obvious conclusion. So you can see quite well that Willy Russell did his best and that there are a lot of basic approaches for a really nice love story, which unfortunately do not lead to a happy ending.

M.S. , 1.Sem. , Nov.2010

Their relationship is platonic love

The play “Educating Rita“ written by Willy Russell in 1983 is about a woman who wants to be more educated. Frank, a literature teacher, is helping her to achieve her aim. After some time they also start talking about topics apart from literature and go to the theatre together. The question arises which kind of relationship dominates between them, and especially if it is even a love attachment.

If you look for a definition of love attachment you will find that it includes mutual acceptance and erotic attraction. The first aspect is definitely given in the play because Frank accepts Rita and likes her the way she is . That is shown on page 63 l. 6, “Rita! Just be yourself ! “ . And the other way round Rita wants to be taught by Frank and therefore she has to accept his personality as well (p. 77 l. 8 “you are a good teacher“).

I believe that Frank has got more feelings for Rita than she does have for him. For example on page 64 he seems to be a bit jealous, because Rita spends some time with the students outside instead of coming directly to him. And in the end (p.77) he asks her to come with him to Australia using the word “us“, but she does not say yes.
However, there is no sign of erotic interest at all, no one tries to kiss the other person or shows any other things that would signal their physical interest (for example flirting). Because of the huge age difference between them it could be a relation like dad and daughter have , but I do not think that Frank is acting like a dad, since he does not try to be a model for Rita. On the contrary, he has an addiction as well. Thus he has an equal relationship to Rita and none of them has either an inferior or a superior position.

All in all I believe that they are just very good friends, which in a classical way can be called platonic love. According to the Greek philosopher Platon, it means a non-sexual relationship based on mental relatedness and friendship. Maybe it is an inconvenient friendship because of their different ages, but they care about each other (p.51 l. 28 Frank: “What’s wrong? Rita!“,p.68 l. 25 Rita: “I care for you, Frank“), they try to help the other person (p.19 l. 21 Frank: “I’ll tell you everything I know“, Rita : P.71 l. 13-16 ), they have same interests, for example talking about literature and they want to spend time together (p. 50 l. 19 Frank: “I wished to have your company“, p.59 l.29 Rita: “Who says I`m gonna disappear?“), and that is what constitutes friendship.

L.D., 1.Sem., Nov. 2010

Opposites attract each other

To answer that question, you first have to define what a love story is. For me a love story deals with minimum two people, who are or fall in love with each other and that the story is nearly only about the relationship of the  people. A happy end is not really necessary. The best example is “Romeo and Juliet”, which is a classical love story, but does not have any happy end at all. Willy Russell says in the preface of his play that he tried hard to write a love story. To say if he failed or not, is a little bit difficult, but I will try to do that.

“Educating Rita” deals with two people, Frank and Rita. Frank is a middle-aged university lecturer and one day, Rita, a younger working class girl with a Liverpudlian accent, comes to him and wants him to teach her how to approach literature.

He starts to like her and is very impressed by her spontaneity and open-mindedness and gets into an inner conflict. As her teacher he has to teach her, but he does not want to change her. That is why he is very sad when she comes back from a summer school trip to London and has changed. Her accent is almost gone, she speaks formally, she knows much about literature and has a new room mate after splitting up with her boyfriend. Almost every attribute Frank liked about her has gone. He tries to show her that it was not good, that she changed like that, but she does not want to hear that. She just recognizes that he was right when her room mate tries to commit suicide. Frank is an alcoholic and after giving a lecture drunken, he gets fired. Then he decides to go to Australia and asks Rita to come with him. She does not make a decision, so there is an open ending.

It is easy to see that Frank has feelings for Rita. He does not want to change her, he makes many compliments during the play, too.(e.g. page 42  line 17-18 : “If she knew I was at the theatre with an irresistible thing like you?”) And he gets jealous, when she meets another student called Tiger. Frank even invites Rita to his home but she does not come because she is afraid and not self-confident enough.
You can see that Frank has feelings for her. But for me, as already mentioned in the beginning, a story is only a love story, if the other person is or falls in love, too. It is difficult to say what Rita really feels about Frank. When she first meets him, she only wants to be taught by him and no one else. She tells him everything and often visits him at the university. At that point you might think that she starts to fall in love with him, but after returning from the summer school, she is different. For her that is an important turning point. She does not seem to be really interested in Frank any more. At that point you are a bit surprised and wonder whether she has any feelings for him. Then she meets Tiger and you seem to be convinced that she does not have any feelings for Frank. Not before the surprising suicide attempt by her roommate she talks with Frank and then there is the open end.

It is very difficult to say what Rita feels about Frank. It is an up and down in the book. But she does not really show such clear signs of love like Frank. In the film, which is based on the book, you can see how she accompanies him to the airport and they just say goodbye to each other with a hug in the end. This makes very clear that they are just friends. The other point, that a love story is nearly just about the relationship of the people, is applicable here. The whole book is about the relationship between Frank and Rita. In that book the saying “opposites attract each other” is shown very well. When they meet first they are very different and the relationship starts to develop very well, but when Rita gets like Frank the relationship is almost destroyed.

So in conclusion, you cannot really say that Willy Russell failed in writing a love story, but you cannot say that this is a pure love story either. It, of course, has some features of a love story.

D.W., 1.Sem., Nov.2010

Frank is an old and depressed university teacher, who likes to spend his time at the pub. His girlfriend is one of his former students and makes dinner for him very often, but instead of being with her he prefers to go to the pub alone.
The other protagonist in Willy Russell´s play is Rita, a 26-year-old woman from the working class, who wants to change her life. She works as a hairdresser and is married, but she is searching for her real self before she is willing to have a baby. Rita tries to live a better life by learning some more. That is why she decides to go to the Open University, where she meets her new tutor Frank.

When Rita crashes into Frank's room wanting an education, although she has no idea what it exactly is that she is asking for. Her directness and her way of thinking surprise him. She does not speak or act formally, which makes him feel more comfortable and she seems like a fresh breeze in his life. She is different to other students who are used to the education she wants to get. For her it is not only a desire to know some more about literature, she wants to change from the inside. Maybe doing something properly and having a choice is what she wants to learn. Frank is astonished, because she is no normal kind of student. This working-class girl has different aims and that is what he admires, it gives him strength to go on teaching although he is really dissatisfied and bored with his job. Years before Frank wrote some poetry, but due to conflicts with his former girlfriend he gave up writing. He sometimes says that this would not have happened, if Rita had there to support him in his work.
So at the beginning of the play, Rita and Frank relationship is one of dependency, because both need each other: he can offer her a way to change and she is Frank's challenge to carry on teaching.

When Frank starts to teach Rita, he notices that she has not any education at all and begins with the basics, like what norms you have to fulfill to pass an exam. For the first time in years, he really has to teach somebody, which gives him a feeling of being useful and heard. The other students do not respect him any longer, because he is always drunk and they already have their own opinion and do not need him. Rita needs him, because her different way to look at things is not always sufficient. She does not have this trained and formal approach required to pass exams. She thinks spontaneously and tries to find a plausible answer quickly because due to her working-class background she does not know the difficult words and explanations at first. Gradually she learns even the complicated words and becomes a better student, maybe one of the best, because of her very personal motivation to change her life.

She becomes more and more independent, splits up with her husband and makes friends with other students, whom she uses as perfect role models for her new life. She begins to create her own world, in which she is the decision-maker and thanks to her new education everything is working.

Frank does not really change throughout the play. Her girlfriend left him, but he didn't find the strength to stop drinking and start something new. Sometimes he constitutes this by saying that he cannot take this on alone and needs Rita, but she'll leave him one day. She appears to be his only hope to escape his old life.

Frank is right about his fear of losing her, because she does not really need him any longer. She designs a new self-confidence and starts other friendships, while he is still alone and addicted to her. At the end of the play the mutual dependency on each other has disappeared,  only Frank is still in need of her, because he has not developed like she has. All in all the relationship between Rita and Frank has changed and has become less intensive, but there is still something that connects both: their love for literature!

J.R., 1.Sem., Nov.2010

The author of “Educating Rita” said he tried very hard to write a love story. But what is a love story? Is it just a narrated story of two people who fall in love with each other? Like a fairytale? Or is it more? I suppose a love story is more than just those points. Love is more than just kissing and flirting and spending time with each other. Love is attachment. You can talk about your hopes and fears. About things you are scared of, about things that are part of your life. A modern love story just knows the happy ending with a new and happy couple. But this is not realistic.

In the play we have two different characters and no greater difference can exist between two persons. They differ in origin, their educational background, behaviour, language, friends, job and lifestyle. But they also have similarities. They are both addicted, they are not satisfied with their lives and also their partners.

So those two persons meet, begin to talk and study literature. In this part of the play Frank becomes more and more interested in Rita, her life and her fate. There are a few scenes where you can see Frank flirts with Rita. He says that if he were married with her, he never would stop out for days. Or he can imagine doing thousand things with Rita instead of teaching her. And later he calls her “ravishing Rita”. But the point is that we do not know if he speaks seriously or just sarcastically.

Of course, there is no kissing in the play but there are other scenes which stand for another kind of love. In the first scenes Rita trusts Frank and tells him everything about her life. She is attracted to him and opens up her heart. She loves him in another way she loves her husband Denny. It is a platonic love. They talk about their problems, philosophy and have discussions about literature. But it is not the love a simple love story requires.

It does not seem that Rita falls in love with Frank. But maybe Frank fell in love with her. In the second part of the play Rita comes late to her lesson and Frank realizes the changing of Rita’s way of talking and behaviour. He becomes a little jealous when Rita tells him about Tyson. In one scene Frank asks himself why Rita did not walk into this room twenty years ago. And Frank becomes concerned about her and her situation. In one scene Frank wants to console her after she was thrown out by her husband. But Rita is more concerned about her essay. Frank wants to become a part of Rita’s life. But soon Frank has to realize that he is just her teacher. She does not inform him about the job she changed. He is attracted to her and Rita becomes the centre of his life.

This love is a one-sided love. Rita does not need Frank any more. She passed her examination, found new friends and a new job. On the other hand Frank is lonely after he split up with Julia and is thrown out of the university. When he thinks about going abroad, Rita does not want to accompany him because she has started a new life.

So all in all you cannot call “Educating Rita” a modern love story. There are no elements of a modern love story. No happy ending, no kissing, no new couple. But it is a story about trusting each other, hope, emotions and two people from different worlds. It is a platonic love. They like and maybe love each other but in a deeper way.

F.C., 1.Sem., Nov.2010

The play “Educating Rita” by Willy Russell, written 1981, deals with the aim of Rita , a confident young hairdresser from the working class, to become more educated by attending an open university course in literature. Her tutor is Frank, a depressed and cynical literature professor, who prepares Rita for her exam. During the drama their relationship becomes more and more important. The author wrote in his introduction, he strongly tried to write a love story. Was Russell´s attempt successful or else did he fail?

To answer this question one has to consider that there are no obvious signs for a love relation such as kissing or flirting etc. In fact Rita never shows the slightest evidence of affection different from a student who is dependent on his teacher. She never makes him suspicious compliments or talks to him with a deeper intention than a respectful friendship. In the end she even says she does not need him anymore because she can live by herself now. That clearly proves how Rita sees him only as an assistant mentor by which she could free herself from the limitations of her former surroundings.  Contrary to this Frank is more likely to show his interest in the young woman although he did not need her in the beginning, he even tried to send her away first. Eventually he drops some hints that he feels more for his student than he should. Frank tells her, he would love to take her hand and run away with her and he asks why she did not come into his study 20 years ago. He claims that his current girlfriend would be furious if she knew how wonderful Rita is and when he notices how Rita talks about another man he gets jealous. He cares for her and fears the gradual change in Rita´s personality.

His fascination and affection for unconventional Rita increases until he is so heavily attached to her he cannot bear the fact that she has her own life with people of her age and he has to let her go eventually. Maybe this is why Frank moves to Australia where he can start a new life and he still has a faint hope that Rita will go with him or follow him.

In my opinion “Educating Rita” is not an ordinary love story. It deals indeed with love and affection but it is kind of tragic because it is unrequited. There is only one person who feels it and the other does not even seem to notice. That is not how a love story is to be expected - the romance and the feeling of mutual love are missing. Altogether the aspect of love in the play is not one of the central topics. It is too subliminal and hardly sensed by the audience.

C.H., 1. Sem., Nov.2010

Willy Russell wrote his play “Educating Rita“ in 1981, which deals with the dream of a young confident hairdresser Rita, who belongs to the working class, to become more educated and that is why she attends an open university course. She is prepared for her exams by her tutor Frank, a depressed man without any illusions about his future. In the preface of his play the author says that he tried so hard to write a love story.

First of all there are no obvious signs like kissing and cuddling or something like that, which indicate that it is a love story. The two protagonists are totally different, not only in their attitude but also in their lifestyle. Frank is stuck in his way of living and shows his interest in Rita very obviously, because she is different from the other students he hates so much. Although he refuses to teach her at their first meeting, he soon realizes that Rita is more than just a student for him. He tells her that he wishes that she had come twenty years earlier and he wants to run away with her. Above all he says that his wife would be mad if she knew that Rita is such a wonderful person. One time he even gets jealous because Rita tells him something about another man. It is obvious that Frank cares for Rita and is afraid she might change her personality by becoming educated.

That is the opposite of the feelings that Rita has for him. Rita does not make Frank compliments or feels more than just friendship. She sees Frank only as her tutor, which is proved when she says to him once that she can live without him because she is no longer dependent on what he says. She just comes to Frank to be more educated and achieve her aim of becoming a woman of the middle class.

The difference between their feelings is also shown in their friendship to other people. Rita has got other university friends. In contrast to that Frank has got no one else than Rita in his life after his partner has left him. It seems as if Rita is no longer dependent on Frank, but it is the other way round. At a certain point Frank has to give up on Rita because she has become a different person after summer school, which sets her priority on other things than her friendship with Frank. In the end Frank uses the opportunity to ask Rita if she wants to come to Australia with him, but she declines. Frank has to build up his own new life in Australia.

To sum up, at first sight “Educating Rita” is not exactly a love story. The problem is that Frank’s feelings are one-sided, while Rita may not even notice them. During the film version of the play there are certain points when you expect them to kiss each other or hug. It feels as if there is a lot more than just friendship, but in the end there is not, so it is no normal love story with a happy end. The chemistry between Frank and Rita is passionate, but Frank’s feelings are different from those of Rita. So from my point a view there are a few aspects that are a sign of a love story, but in the end it does not seem like that because the two are separated from each other before they make their feelings clear to each other.

S.M., 1.Sem., Nov.2010