A central theme of the play is female agency and how women feeling stuck in a cycle of disempowerment struggle to achieve autonomy for fear of the consequences. Threaded amongst powerful songs and the play’s incredible comedic moments, Waitress stages the struggle for female autonomy through the marriage between Jenna and her husband Earl. Through snatches of flashbacks, the play makes clear the abusive relationship between Jenna’s parents, the pain of which her mother displaces into pie-making, teaching Jenna to do the same. Embroiled in a mentality of avoidance and disempowerment, the play demonstrates through Jenna’s character the difficulty of feeling able to break the cycle of marriages between a controlling and abusive husband and a wife who must settle for ‘happy enough’.
"...the play’s brilliance partly comes from its depiction of the transformative power of motherhood on female agency."
The main source of Jenna’s anxiety in the play is her pregnancy. While she initially ignores her pregnancy, it gradually becomes a source of her fear. Jenna acknowledges her baby is the product of an unhappy marriage that in being born, would be forced to share her life of abuse. As the song ‘She Used To Be Mine’ illustrates, Jenna is terrified of having her baby and remaining unable to fight against her current situation, fearing that she is implicating her baby within the cycle of abuse she cannot break free from. However, the play’s brilliance partly comes from its depiction of the transformative power of motherhood on female agency.
"The play’s finale establishes a sense of hope, demonstrating that in having something of her own for the first time, and in recognising her daughter’s innocence, Jenna understands and seizes her own agency..."
After Jenna gives birth at the end of the play to a little girl, her eyes fix on the baby, and without taking her eyes from her, she expresses her desire to divorce Earl, threatening him if he tries to remain in their lives. The song ‘Everything Changes’ acts as a narrative tool to unpack and explore Jenna’s emotions surrounding her coinciding sense of motherhood and empowerment. She confesses that her sense of self has been subsumed by her role as a mother, including the parts of her that were victim to and dominated by Earl’s coercive control. The play’s finale establishes a sense of hope, demonstrating that in having something of her own for the first time, and in recognising her daughter’s innocence, Jenna understands and seizes her own agency, assuming the level of authority over her life to break the cycle of abuse that is the play’s central conflict. There is a dual sense of salvation, as in saving her daughter from a life under Earl’s control, Jenna has in turn been saved, the hopeful and resilient parts of her she believed had been lost being ‘reborn’ in her as a result of her newfound maternal autonomy.
Waitress, as well as being a bright and lively musical that is beloved for its hilarious characters, female friendships and romance also stages a powerful vignette of motherhood as a route to female power and autonomy.