Mukherjee reached the peak of her career with this film, possibly Ray's greatest film as well, the Apu trilogy notwithstanding. As the bored and neglected housewife in Victorian Calcutta of the 1870s who gets attracted to her husband's cousin Amal (Soumitra Chatterjee), Mukherjee makes the central role of Charu her own. To date, Mukherjee in "Charulata" remains the benchmark for what an ideal Tagore heroine should be; it is said that when Ray returned to Tagore with "Ghare Baire" (1984) ("The Home and the World"), he stylised Swatilekha Chatterjee in a manner similar to Madhabi in "Charulata".