Maria is a woman who follows a clear, straightforward path, marked by the "commandment of tradition" and the "institutional requirements". She gets married, runs a house, tries to get along with her mother-in-law, plans a pregnancy with her husband. Everything changes at the moment when the woman miscarries the foetus - the titular three millimetres.
The woman is not able to do the "work of mourning" - everyone, including the Nurse and the Man in Black appearing out of nowhere (a priest), persuade Maria to baptise the child and to perform a burial. The more they insist, the more the rebellion against the social pressure on this and many other aspects of life arises in the heroine. A symbolic moment of rejection of her old identity is the change of her name to "Magdalena". Thus, the former virtuous and orderly Madonna, the icon of the ideal woman, becomes a blatant sinner - with the difference that her "fault" consists of rejecting traditional constructs and trying to look at her own needs.
"What should I bury? I don't even know if this life is lost in this clot or not, the blood was flowing warm and dense along my thighs, soaking into my pajama pants, pouring on the floor and soaking into the towel I was using to stop the bleeding. Should I bury the towel and pajamas too? Bless the dirty water that was used to scrub the floor? For me, the funeral has already taken place, leave me alone."
It is worth noting that the woman's actions are not radical. It is enough to abandon the duties of a "real woman", for the family and close and distant acquaintances to deny her honour and faith. Her mother-in-law contemptuously claims that she "got high on feminism", all while repeating clichés about her innate maternal instinct and the need to take care of the home hearth. The husband, who is occasionally accompanied by the mysterious Man in Black, uses biblical and pseudo-biblical phrases, pseudo-scientific demographic argumentation, and finally, simple blackmail to force his wife to produce a progeny. Magdalena tries to articulate her arguments, but as a woman and an individual she is doomed to fail. She is depressed, her body rejects another pregnancy. The woman symbolically regains her voice in the finale when she delivers a manifesto - a sort of confession of innocence. At this point, the heroine clearly refers to the current political situation.
"I wanted to make proposals.
I wanted the Constitution.
I wanted the Bill of Rights."
The author consciously employs linguistic and situational clichés to show the tragedy of woman/women in a poignant way. Maria/Magdalena is the only heroine with a name, although the name becomes the most oppressive tool - after all, the society consistently takes away her identity, pushing into subsequent stereotypical roles: an ideal mother, wife, daughter-in-law, Catholic. Her experiences will reflect those of many readers and spectators. This is an obligatory position for the contemporary Polish theatre.