Anna Wickham’s speaker watches women selling flowers from baskets in the street and feels that something valuable is lost. The flowers are naturally sweet, but once they become “a huckster’s merchandise,” half their beauty disappears. It is not the flowers themselves that bother her; it is the act of selling something natural.
Then she turns the question on herself: who will buy “that natural service, my maternity?” If flowers can be priced and sold, why not motherhood? The comparison is blunt and deliberately uncomfortable. The title “State Endowment” hints that society should pay mothers for the work they naturally do, yet the final question suggests no one is offering. The mood is wry, a little bitter, and challenging—not sorrowful, but sharp. It leaves the reader wondering whether natural things, including a woman’s body and labor, should ever be treated as merchandise.