There is pathos as well as humiliation in the thought that such a thing as a soul can be stunted by the trivialities of personal appearance, and it is a fact not beyond the reach of sympathy that each time Charlotte stood before her glass her ugliness spoke to her of failure, and goaded her to revenge.

She noted that "the book is a superb piece of architecture" and that it is "an unsurpassed example of a fusion between two lively minds", and that its authors "must have realised their extraordinary achievement, and may have doubted if they could ever touch it again."

In 2000, Brian Fallon wrote in The Irish Times that The Real Charlotte "is generally agreed to be Somerville and Ross's masterpiece, and one of the half-dozen or so Irish novels which might justifiably be called great […] though the authors are somewhat snobbish and condescending towards Francie, the pretty young interloper from Dublin, she is real and touching even in her social gaucherie.

As Anthony Cronin says, Ulysses, which might seem to qualify as “the best”, is a “fictive construction”, while The Real Charlotte is a powerful exemplar of the classic novel as it was, and sometimes still is, written.

"[14] In 1975, a stage adaptation was produced at the Gate Theatre, written by Terence de Vere White and Adrian Vale and starring Pat Leavy.