Admirable women: impoverished, yes, but not without resources

The steady declension of the lives of such women informs George Gissing's ''The Odd Women," a novel that is even more brilliantly grim than his better-known ''New Grub Street." Squeezed in the vise of birth and breeding, these miserable souls were free to take only a few jobs, of which governess and female companion were typical, and all of which were, in general, ill-paid, humiliating, and dead end. Even though I am a great big noisy untrammeled American person who feels (but for sloth) that she may do anything she likes, the plight of the impoverished gentlewoman through the 19th century up until after the Second World War has terrified me ever since I got over the dread of ending up (somehow) in an orphanage run on strict Christian principles.

The claustrophobia of this life, the making do and scrimping and eking out, the keeping up of appearances, the champagne one would never drink, the medicinal port one might resort to, are unbearable to contemplate. The terms of such a life, though particular to a certain class, gender, and historical circumstance, strike a universal chord -- just as release from their straitening clutch has universal enchantment, as any number of novels have shown.

Escape from an arid life of penniless gentility is what Winifred Watson's ''Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day" (paperback, $15) is about. This wonderful little comedy, first published in 1938, has been reissued in a demurely elegant volume complete with its original illustrations by Persephone Books, an English outfit.

Poor Miss Pettigrew: 40-year-old daughter of the late Reverend Mr. Pettigrew, curate. Alone in the world, down to her last coppers, she is looking for yet another wretched situation as a governess. Outside the home of a potential employer, she addresses God, making no bones about her predicament: ''It's my last chance. You know it. I know it." And before you can say ''demimonde," Miss Pettigrew is propelled into the complicated life and lifestyle of Miss Delysia LaFosse, who has one lover in her bed, another on his way there, and yet another who desires, in his tiresome way, to marry her.

'' 'Not the room of a lady,' " reflects Miss Pettigrew as she takes in the exotic furnishings. '' 'Not the kind of room my dear mother would have chosen.' " Still, she is less shocked, far less, than she feels she should be, even as things really begin to hot up (''This was drama. This was action"). Soon, almost despite herself, she has made herself indispensable to Miss LaFosse and her friend Miss Dubarry, and the three embark on a night on the town: ''She, Miss Pettigrew, spinster, maiden lady, dull nonentity, jobless, incompetent, was bound for a night club, clad in splendor: painted like the best of them, shameless as the worst of them, uplifted with ecstasy." Overcome by unwonted kindness, she is hauled back from the brink of tears by the alarmed young women: '' 'For God's sake control yourself. . . . Your make up. Remember your duty to your make up.' "

According to a preface to the novel by Henrietta Twycross-Martin -- everyone connected with Persephone Books sounds remarkably genteel -- Watson believed that she wrote exclusively for women. But I don't see who, aside from Miss Pettigrew's sainted parents, would not enjoy this splendidly amusing novel, a real gem and something like ''Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" in sensible shoes and woolen drawers.

I am happy to say that, after running a course strewn with cocktails, Miss Pettigrew finds love ('' 'You naughty girl. You giddy old kipper' ") in the person of a rich 55-year-old man. Another such being is the salvation of one more impoverished lady past the first blush of youth, in Frances Hodgson Burnett's ''The Making of a Marchioness," published in 1901 -- it, too, reissued by Persephone Books (paperback, $15). Burnett is, of course, the author of ''The Secret Garden," a book I read at least five times as a child. But she is also the author of ''Little Lord Fauntleroy," a novel that I could not stomach because of the sheer obscenity of its small hero's goodness. I guess I have grown into a stronger constitution now, because even though the goodness of Emily Fox-Seton, the heroine of the present novel, is just as unspeakable as that of young Fauntleroy, it now strikes me as being wildly funny.

At 35 Miss Fox-Seton is still ''a simple, normal-minded creature" and it takes ''but little . . . to cause her to break into her good-natured, childlike smile." She is engaged in ''one of the new ways woman have found to make a living," which is to say she serves as general dogsbody for well-heeled patrons. Her good will is preternatural, and this brings her to the attention of Lord Walderhurst, ''a well-mannered person of whom painful things were not said." A childless widower, he needs an heir and, perforce, a wife. Some think Lady Agatha Slade will get the nod; despite her poverty (''Oh . . . how I wish I owned a colliery") she ''has some of the nicest blood in England in her veins." Veteran readers, however, will not be surprised to find Miss Fox-Seton, ''blooming like a large rose," sporting a ruby ''as big as a trouser button" on her finger at novel's end.

(Persephone Books has published almost 50 books so far, all reissues of out-of-print works. All are uniformly bound in dove-gray covers with beautiful period endpapers. Those designs are visible at www.persephone.co.uk, as are descriptions of the works and ordering information. Each volume is $15 and $7 for postage, or three volumes for $60 total. Books will arrive within five days.)

Katherine A. Powers, a writer and critic, lives in Cambridge. Her column appears on alternate Sundays. She can be reached at pow3@earthlink.net.