Upright the Page of Cups is read as emotional sensitivity, intuition and the earliest stirrings of a creative or feeling-led beginning; reversed, as emotional immaturity, insecurity, or an escapism that avoids feeling rather than exploring it.
As a court card the Page carries the deck's double reading, standing for a person, generally young or young in this particular capacity, or for an influence entering a situation rather than any specific individual; readers commonly use the fish popping from the cup as the visual key to which reading applies, a surprising message arriving from feeling itself rather than from circumstance.
Waite's own printed meaning, a studious youth, one who gives news, is generally messenger imagery, close to how Page cards function across all four suits in his system; the more purely dispositional reading, sensitivity and openness as a personality trait rather than as a message received, is a later broadening consistent with how court cards generally have been reinterpreted across the twentieth century.
Because the Princess ranks carry no zodiacal decan of their own, unlike the King, Queen and Knight above them, some commentators read this as reinforcing the Page's traditional status as the least fixed, most provisional of the court, feeling still finding its form rather than already given one.