Jane Austen on Undine Spragg: "When I set out to write Emma, I said that "I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like," and write a book about her. Undine Spragg, on the other hand, is a heroine that even the author could not like. While Emma is spoiled, selfish and vain, she has a genuine fondness for her family and neighbors and a desire to become a better person. Undine has a genuine fondness for herself and a desire to become a richer person."

Emma Woodhouse on Undine Spragg: “Wickedness is always wickedness, but folly is not always folly. Undine Spragg is wickedness. To love her is folly."

Ayn Rand on Undine Spragg: Undine knows her own value and her intrinsic worth. She is beautiful and deserves to get what she wants from life. We should not feel sorry for the others who were hurt by her ambitions because they are not beautiful and therefore do not have her intrinsic worth. If she didn't have that worth, she would not have been able to succeed where so many others have failed. It is right and just that Undine should succeed. When I say ‘Undine Spragg,’ I mean a full, pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire beauty — with a separation of men from their bank accounts. 

John Galt on Undine Spragg: “She swore by her own life and her love of herself that she would never live for the sake of another man, but rather would live for the joy of allowing men to admire her beauty. Preferably with cash, in a fine hotel room, wearing a new dress."

Yes, there will be a real review at some point soon! But this amused me this morning.

I am basically at the midpoint - I've read Books I & II, and have Books III & IV left. While Hall & Oates came a century later, and Undine never drove a Jaguar, they nailed her:

Hey, Char, have you read this one? I know you are such an Edith Wharton fan!

Undine Spragg is our main protagonist. She is new money, Midwestern, heir to a druggist fortune, named after a hair straightening solution released the week she was born. Father is firmly nouveau riche, Undine has aspirations above her station. This is the third in a cycle of New York stories written by Wharton which I have read, in addition to The House of Mirth and Age of Innocence.

Wharton is up there with Austen, Gaskell and Cather for me.