Educating Rita (Act 1 Scene 7 & 8)

In the previous scene, Frank invites Rita to his dinner party but she doesn’t go. She gives lots of excuses to say why she didn’t go, for instance that she didn’t have what to wear or that she didn’t remember where Frank lives, etc. I think that the real cause of her absence was that she didn’t feel very confident about herself. She might have felt that she wouldn’t be able to talk about the same topics, issues, etc with Frank’s friends. This might have happened because Rita needs to gain more confidence on herself and on the knowledge she is getting. It’s not an easy job but it’s not impossible to achieve, it would take time.

By the end of the scene 8, Rita asks Frank to be completely honest as regards the way she writes and what she has to do so as to pass the exams and to write essays as the other students do.
What Frank tells makes her feel that she needs to change her writing style since she tends to express her inner thoughts and feelings. So she considers that they have to start again since she feels that her work till then is not enough to achieve her goal.

Educating Rita (Act 1 Scene 6)

After having seen Macbeth (play written by Shakespeare), she tells Frank that “it wasn’t borin´, it was bleedin´great (…) it was fantastic.” Although she uses these words to express her enthusiasm, it would be improper to use them in an essay.
I think that Rita might have to distinguish what language style (I mean formal or informal) is the best to write an essay. It wouldn’t be rare to think that she may write with an informal language since she may feel that her thoughts are expressed better with that informal language style. That is, by using “her real words” (the words that she uses daily), she may be able to express herself when she saw the play.
Sometimes people tend to feel awkward when they use, wear or talk in a way that they aren’t used to. However, we should try hard if we want to be better, so that Rita should try hard to write the essay with a more sophisticated language.


When Frank and Rita talk about the play and the difference between tragedy and tragic, Frank makes Rita realize that the main character, Macbeth, can’t avoid what is going to happen, that is, his fate. Then Rita says “all them out there, they know all about that sort of thing don’t they?” I think that what she may want to say is that all those students (when she says that, she is watching through the window to the students, I guess) have another way to analyze things, a deeper one than she has. She might think that they have the “tools” that are needed to make that kind of analysis. What I wanted to say when I refer to “tools” is that they may have been “trained” to make analysis of that kind.
I feel that she might be sorry about that since she is not aware of many things yet as regards literature analysis.