How To Become Emma Peel!

Mrs. Emma Peel, the incredibly stylish secret agent portrayed by Diana Rigg on the smash television hit The Avengers, is our next subject. Unfortunately, Diana Rigg left the small screen to star in the Bond movie On Her Majesty's Secret Service, though, for me, she will always be Emma Peel.

1. Be a secret agent. Fight the bad guys and become well-known for it among the espionage world. Have an incredibly debonair man as your partner and have a close personal relationship with him. He should have a gorgeous flat and a vintage Rolls Royce. An umbrella with a sword built in and a bowler hat are also necessary accessories.

2. Be incredibly stylish. Favour catsuits – especially leather ones. Have perfectly-coiffed hair and perfect makeup all the time, despite various escapades which might cause a lesser woman to appear less than perfect.

3. Be a feminist and kick butt in every walk of life – from capturing bad guys or dressing stylishly. Excel in a number of skills, from painting to science to redecorating your own flat and everything in between. Save your partner’s life on more than one occasion.

4. Master jiu-jitsu, and practice constantly so that you are able to overpower everyone – including men far heavier than you. Use your skills to get out of nearly every situation imaginable.

5. In those few occasions where you might find yourself stuck, don’t panic. Your partner will rescue you (even if he does have a good laugh over finding you in a chastity belt.)

6. Have an awesome flat where you enjoy your many leisure activities. Naturally it will have apparatus for scientific experiments, tools for carving statues, and gadgets for everything in between. After all, you are the quintessential modern woman!

7. Drink copious amounts of champagne, even in the mornings. After all, it is the drink of gods! Drink before eleven in the morning. End every day by opening a bottle. Have fun!

8. Spend quite a significant amount of time jetting to Paris for the weekend with your partner. Go to the theatre often. Dine out almost every night. In short, live the sophisticated life of your dreams.

9. Turn the heads of many men, but never return their affections. Stay friendly but aloof, never accepting gifts or anything else from them – except your partner.

10. Lose your husband in a mysterious plane crash over a rainforest (the Amazon is recommended). Just as it seems your relationship with your partner is about to step into the romantic, have him return. Ride off into the sunset together in a really awesome car. However, look back at your partner’s window and mourn what you have lost but never had.

How To Become Elinor Dashwood!

Elinor Dashwood, the heroine of Jane Austen's novel Sense and Sensibility, is our next fictional heroine. Sense and Sensibility is one of Austen's best-known works, and as such has naturally been adapted for screen several times - most famously the 1995 movie version starring Emma Thompson as Elinor.

Now, on to the main feature: how to become Elinor Dashwood!

1. Be eminently practical. Take charge of your family with a firm but gentle hand. Cause your younger sister much heartache over your seeming lack of any strong emotion. Even when you fall in love, hide your feelings (or attempt to hide them) from your family. However, keep his handkerchief in your pocket always, in an attempt to feel close to him.

2. Despair of your younger sister for being too emotional and too obsessed by love. However, despise anyone who hurts her and worry about her when she is discarded by the man she loves. Throughout all her troubles, secretly cherish a hope that she’ll marry the man who is in love with her, though he’s about twenty years older.

3. Fall in love with your sister-in-law’s eldest brother. He should be named Edward. Naturally, he is handsome, wealthy, and kind. Even more naturally, he is already taken – of course by the girl who becomes one of your closest friends.

4. Deprive your family of sugar and beef. When you are asked, angrily, if you want the family to starve, reply that you just don’t want them to eat beef. After all, you are on a budget, and it annoys you that no one but you remembers it!

5. Go to London to experience ‘the season’. Unfortunately, you cannot enjoy it, as you are always thinking of the man you love. Just when you come to terms with not seeing him, he will appear in your doorway. Unfortunately, you cannot steal a moment with him, as his fiancée is in the room with you. Make polite excuses although you would like nothing more to sink into the ground.

6. Carry your heartache with you everywhere – just as you carry his handkerchief (which, unfortunately, is also carried by his fiancée). Don’t allow yourself to cry, ever, though you think about him every day.

7. Resent your role as confidante to his fiancé, but keep calm and carry on throughout all her numerous confidences. Finally show a bit of spite towards her after she chastises you about speaking ill of your in-laws.

8. When your younger sister falls ill after a rather stupid stunt (running through the rain to look at a house, even if it is where the man she loves lives, is rather idiotic!), nurse her back to health lovingly. Despair when you come close to losing her.

9. When you realise you will never marry the man you love, do all you can to make him happy – even if it means that you will be neighbours for the rest of your life. Act completely selflessly, even though your heart is breaking.

10. Start crying when you believe the man you love has gotten married. Continue crying when you realise you are mistaken. Still cry when he proposes to you, at long last. Naturally be crying when you accept.

How to Become Hermione Granger, Even if You're a Muggle

Hermione Granger, the bushy-haired know-it-all of the Harry Potter books, is certainly one of the best-known, and arguably one of the best-loved characters of the books. Famously portrayed by Emma Watson in the movies, Hermione Granger is our next fictional heroine!



1. Be a know-it-all. Check out thousand-page books for ‘a bit of light reading.’ Don’t worry – it will all pay off when you and your two best friends are looking for a six hundred year old man. Be an over-achiever. Memorise every textbook you’re assigned (and then some). Take every single class offered and nearly collapse with the effort. Take entire libraries with you when you go off to fight an evil wizard (or dictator, if you’re a Muggle).

2. Don’t bother making yourself look presentable. Allow your naturally bushy hair to take up an entire room of its own. Naturally, you won’t have to bother with makeup, as no one will be looking at your face. However, at the big event of the year, shock everyone by actually dressing up, wearing makeup, and straightening your hair.

3. Carry around a gigantic book detailing every little bit of your school’s history and cite it continuously. Become very annoyed when your friends refuse to read it, instead relying on your intimate knowledge of the book. Naturally, this will be very frustrating for you, but just grin and bear it.

4. Fall in love with one of your teachers when you turn twelve. It’s highly preferable if he is famous, gorgeous, has perfect teeth, shiny blond hair, blue eyes, and is completely stupid. Naturally, if you took the time to look up ‘narcissist’ in the dictionary, you will find his picture. Why he’s not interested in you: you’re twelve. Also, his favourite colour is lavender. Beware: you’ll feel terrible when you find out he plagiarised materials for his books and lectures.

5. Always do what you feel is right – even if it’s not and even if it makes you unpopular. Don’t hesitate to be a tell-tale if you feel your friends are doing something wrong. Naturally, your friends will hate you, but it’s all for the best – right?

6. Pick a cause and fight for it, especially if your friends disagree with what you’re doing – and even if the cause really does NOT want your interference. Naturally, you shall have to become adept at knitting, for your cause requires it!

7. Your worst fear must be, without any variation, failing all your exams. After all, your entire life is focussed around your studies! Burst into tears if you only get 107% on an exam.

8. Don’t finish secondary school, though you want to remain. Instead, go out with your two best friends, one of whom is destined to save the world, live in a tent for a year, and hunt evil wizards (or dictators, if you’re a Muggle). It’s a lot of fun, though very dangerous. A tip: learn to cook, or else you will have a lot of fights with your friends over poor quantity and quality of their dinners!

9. Fall in love with your best friend since the age of eleven. Marry him at an early age and pop out several red-haired babies in quick succession. Become incredibly annoyed with your husband because of his stupidity, but stick with him anyway.

10. Later in life, after your marriage, nurture a deep attachment to either: your former, bat-like professor, despite the fact that he’s deceased; your strict former Deputy Headmistress, despite the fact she’s about seventy years older than you; the boy who did nothing but mock you in school, though he strongly resembles a ferret; or your other best friend who just happened to save the world (Wizarding or otherwise), though he’s married to one of your closest friends.

How To Become Mary Poppins!

Mary Poppins, originally created by P.L. Travers in a series of novels beginning with Mary Poppins, was immortalised on film by Julie Andrews in the 1964 movie by Walt Disney. Mary Poppins, quite possibly the most famous nanny - fictional or otherwise - in the world, is this week's fictional heroine.

1. Become a nanny. Buy a parrot-headed umbrella that can talk and a bottomless carpetbag that can hold the contents of a bedroom. As it’s best to start off on the right foot, fly from job to job – it’s quite intimidating and will certainly keep the children in line. The East Wind will bring you to your jobs and the West Wind will take you away.

2. Teach your charges that a spoonful of sugar does make the medicine go down. However, this saying will not work with the nasty clinical stuff you buy at the drugstore – your medicine needs to change according to the person’s tastes. Your flavour should be rum punch, however, DO NOT get drunk from it! It does not make a good impression on your employers.

3. Tidy up the nursery by snapping your fingers, because you really can get work done like that in the grown-up world. Insist your charges stop just when they’re beginning to have fun – after all, enough is as good as a feast.

4. Take your charges to the park, where you meet up with your suitor who just happens to be screeving there. Pop into one of his chalk pavement pictures and have a jolly holiday. You are permitted to steal some time with your paramour while the children run along to the fair so handily drawn into the picture. Naturally, the animals that inhabit the picture will not give you a moment’s peace, but insist on serenading you – after all, you’re their favourite person. By the time they are through, it will be time to go back to your charges. If you are lucky, steal a few minutes to dance to the music of a magical carousel.

5. Use made-up words to teach the children that the old adage ‘speech is silver but silence is golden’ is untrue. After all, there is a special word to use when you don’t know what to say – and that word is supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. It’s so special that it has no exact definition, just a song and dance to explain when and how to use it.

6. Attempt to live by the saying ‘practically perfect people never permit sentiment to muddle their feelings’. Fail miserably, for even your practically perfect self can become attached to your charges.

7. Have tea parties on the ceiling with your uncle, your charges, and your lover. Insult other peoples’ methods of laughing. Your way is perfectly adequate, thank you!

8. Show your charges that sometimes what seems scary can actually be very beautiful. Take them up to the roofs and show them the sights. Then engage in elaborate dances with your suitor and his friends. Don’t forget to powder your nose with soot – it’s a must!

9. Work your magic on the inattentive parents of your charges. Make them realise the error of their ways. Boss them around and put ideas into their heads. Inadvertently drive the father mad. Leave when he finally comes to his senses and starts paying attention to his children again.

10. Be practically perfect in every way ;D

How To Become Jean Brodie!

Jean Brodie, from Muriel Spark's novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, may be considered more of a villain than a heroine, but nonetheless, she is our first subject.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie has been adapted into a play, a movie, and a mini-series. Several actresses who have portrayed Jean Brodie are: Vanessa Redgrave (who originated the role), Maggie Smith (who won the Best Actress Academy Award in 1969 for her portrayal of Jean Brodie in the movie; pictured above), Geraldine McEwan (in the 1978 miniseries), and Fiona Shaw (in the 1998 National Theatre production).

Now that I've bored you with the actresses who have portrayed this remarkable character, on to the main feature!

How to Become Jean Brodie in Ten Easy Steps!

1. Become a teacher (preferably at an all-girls school) bent on instilling your views in each one of your students. Select a group of your favourites (no more than six) and have them to your flat for tea on Saturdays. Take them to galleries and the theatre, preferably to see controversial plays. Take them to see La Traviata and insist that dying of a broken heart is perfectly possible. Quote poetry, especially ‘The Lady of Shalott’, at every possible opportunity. Tell them the stories of your life before you became a spinster and your travels around the world. Enlighten them as to the benefits of cleansing cream and witch-hazel over ordinary soap and water. Constantly say that you never expect to be betrayed, and thus be completely surprised when you are.

2. Fall in love with your married colleague. If he is the art teacher and has only one arm, all the better. Kiss him once in his classroom and get interrupted by one of your students. Deny him for the rest of his or your life but encourage one of your students to take your place in his bed. Find out later that said student has not begun a love affair with your married colleague, but the girl who was supposed to keep you informed of the affair has switched roles with her. Lash out against the girl, then repent.

3. Take up with the teacher who is in love with you. He should be rich, quiet, shorter than you, and an accomplished musician. Make him fall in love with you, feed him instead of loving him, and share his bed in a definite sense of martyrdom. Eventually, he will tire of you putting him off the idea of marriage and marry another teacher from the school, who just happens to be the exact opposite of you.

4. Never marry, even though you are hard-pressed by your current lover to accept his proposal. Cite your dead fiancé as an excuse, though it’s really because you don’t love the man proposing to you. Nurse a deep, desperate passion for your married colleague, but never act on it (except for that one kiss).

5. Disagree with the Headmistress on every possible topic, from the proper method of teaching to the benefits of taking your students to galleries and the theatre. Win every argument. Embarrass her in front of her employees.

6. Be paranoid. Believe that every teacher (except the man whom you love and the man who loves you) is against you and plotting your demise. Hold meetings with your girls and come up with elaborate plans to counter each threat, whether real or imagined. Believe that even a simple ‘good morning’ is a threat – it rhymes with ‘scorning’, after all. Reply ‘good mawning’, flattening their scorn beneath the chariot wheels of your superiority.

7. Rotate churches, attending services at any Christian church outside the Roman Catholic pale. Attend comparative religion lectures at the local university. Travel to Rome and refuse to kiss the Pope’s ring, just to make a point.

8. Travel around the world, having affairs in every port of call. Then return to your school and tell your students all the details, however obliquely you may phrase your experiences. Preferably travel to countries with dictators.

9. Fall in love with dictators and preach their strengths to your students. Hang up pictures of them and their armies, mark their progress on a map (if they are at war) using coloured flag pins. While this will be your downfall, at least it will be more exotic than those other spinsters who just take to drink.

10. Believe you are perfect, even though you’re not. Believe you are above the rules and common moral code, even though you’re not. Believe God is on your side, no matter what course you choose, even though he’s not.

How to Become Your Favourite Fictional Heroine...

Welcome to "How to Become Your Favourite Fictional Heroine in Ten Steps or Less"! Each week we will take a different heroine of fiction and break down the essential aspects of her character, allowing you to follow ten easy steps (or less!) to become her!