Educating Rita

Educating Rita Irony

Frank and the Tragic Flaw

It is ironic that Frank talks volubly of Macbeth's tragic flaw but does not seem aware that he possesses his own tragic flaws that are inhibiting his actions and any possibility of change.

Trish

It is ironic that Trish, the person to whom Rita initially ascribes all of the trappings of class and taste, ends up wanting to take her own life.

Education

One of the great ironies of the play is that Rita may have exchanged one rigid set of social mores, norms, and codes for another; she is simply ascribing to the middle class's ways of thinking and behaving rather than the lower class's. 

 

Australia

Irony is seen in Frank being sent to Australia. As scholar Jorn K. Bramman writes, "Australia was, of course, the former penal colony where England sent her convicts, mostly victims of the social conditions that racked the kingdom's lower classes at the time. Frank's reassignment is a comical encore of those earlier exiles."

 

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