A study of Middleton's insights into the moral psychology of the mediocre mind. Hallett argues that Middleton was an artist with one subject, the baseness of the urban middle class, and throughout his career he develops only one original insight into the subject, an insight that informs the action of both WOMEN BEWARE WOMEN and THE CHANGELING. This insight was that a challenge to the values or expectations of the average man will neither plummet him into an abyss of sin nor open the possibility to him of an ascent to another level of reality for fulfillment. Such a person merely slides to the lowest common denominator. From then on his life is characterized by the cynicism which steels him against self-reproach and the recrimination of society. Middleton was interested in cynicism in much the same way that Baudelaire was interested in ennui--a fact particularly obvious in Middleton's drawing of Allwit in A CHASTE MAID IN CHEAPSIDE, Bianca in WOMEN BEWARE WOMEN, and Beatrice and DeFlores in THE CHANGELING.