How to Marry a Millionaire : WHAT HAS <i> SHE</i> GOT? <i> By Cynthia S. Smith (Donald I</i> .<i> Fine: $19.95; 225 pp.) </i>

“A single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife,” Jane Austen observed long ago.

That was before married men were considered eligible. In those days, the predatory female had little scope. Multiple marriage was rare; you generally got only one shot, and the best you could hope for was to snag Mr. Darcy, the richest bachelor in the neighborhood. Of course, this only worked if you already lived in the high-rent district. If you didn’t, there were no rock stars or junk-bond moguls to run off with and few gigs for highly paid courtesans. Not many matches were unexpected or inappropriate. Elizabeth Bennet never could have had a fling with Donald Trump.

Now the twin miracles of democracy and divorce have changed all that. Thanks to increased social mobility and the decline of morality, opportunities for romantic success have proliferated dramatically. “What Has She Got?” recounts the careers of a dozen “ordinary” women who managed to attract and extract commitments from a string of wealthy and accomplished men.

The subjects range from glitzy ‘80s trophy wives to Alma Mahler, wife of the composer Gustav, the architect Walter Gropius and the writer Franz Werfel. (She’s best known today as the inspiration of the Tom Lehrer song.) The Duchess of Windsor is included, naturally, but aficionados will find her chapter not rich enough and too thin.

Cynthia S. Smith is better on less well-documented femmes fatales, including Mia Farrow, Slim Keith, Jessica Lange and Pamela Churchill Hayward Harriman. She claims that “the one striking similarity shared by all of these . . . is their very ordinariness. They have an everyday look about them, the kind of women you pass pushing carts in the supermarket.” Not in my Ralphs, thank heaven.

When the charms of her subjects are much touted, Smith argues that “once a woman has made a glamorous liaison, people begin to endow her with features never before apparent. . . . Overnight an ordinary woman is transformed into an international beauty.” I call that sour grapes, and unilluminating.

And how can Smith claim these women all lead derivative lives, without dismissing their own sometimes considerable achievements? Surely the actresses Mia Farrow and Jessica Lange, and artist and author Francoise Gilot deserve credit for their own accomplishments, despite the company they keep.

This discounting presumably is done on the theory that ordinary women buy more books than extraordinary ones. The message is, “You, I, any of us could do it. All you have to do is decide would it be worth it.” Like a nonfiction Horatio Alger, distaff division, Smith spins these inspirational tales to show you how it’s done.

The first millionaire is the hardest, and here you’re pretty much on your own. You could become a stewardness and marry a passenger--which is how Susan Gutfreund got her start--but that’s risky, given the predicaments the airlines and Salomon Bros. are in. Obsessive drive comes in handy, and so does having a much-admired but highly critical father, who has inured you to incessant egomaniacal demands.

However you manage to snag your first millionaire or celeb, make sure he isn’t a recluse. You must attend plenty of dinner parties at the homes of his rich and/or prominent friends in order to meet your subsequent husbands and lovers.

If you choose wisely, the eminence of your affiliations will add to your charms, which speaks volumes about the way gender and power operate. Not even Dr. Jonas Salk was immune to the cachet of succeeding Picasso as the main squeeze of Gilot, the artist’s mistress for 10 years, now Salk’s wife.

I almost forgot sex. Apparently rich, famous and gifted men enjoy sex and may have kinky tastes, so you’d best be “savvy enough to know that fellatio is not a new pasta dish.”

So far, so good, but that’s about as close to the nitty-gritty as Smith gets, unless you count the info that Alma Mahler never wore underpants. Yet many of Smith’s observations are shrewd, amusing and apt. “If you attend a four-alarm wedding where the hors d’oeuvre table stretches twenty feet across and is manned by four white-toqued chefs skillfully carving filets and broiling baby lamb chops, followed by a six-course meal complete with vintage wines . . . and the wedding processional is accompanied by the New York Philharmonic with Madonna singing ‘Because,’ you know the father of the bride is a neo-millionaire who four years ago was wearing iridescent raincoats and Thom McAn shoes.”

This may not be the ideal gift for Mother Teresa, Margaret Thatcher or my mother-in-law, a retired elementary school principal who belongs to the Brandeis book club. But she speed-reads the National Enquirer in line in the supermarket, and I intend to pass this book along.