Victor Frankenstein
Frankenstein

Make a new friend. No, actually make one. Out of a bunch of dead people’s parts. If the resulting creation is what you’d call “an abomination,” don’t run away screaming, or it might subsequently kill your wife and brother. And whatever you do, don’t make it a girlfriend, because the only thing worse than SAD is being the third wheel.

Clarissa Dalloway
Mrs. Dalloway

Plan a party to revitalize all your friends during those gloomy months! Just don’t think too hard about your life choices, or you’ll find yourself regretting your marriage, wishing you’d had the courage to be with the woman you really love, and admiring the suicide of a veteran suffering from PTSD.

Humbert Humbert
Lolita

To stave off the ennui, form an unhealthy obsession with your landlady’s teenage daughter, marry your landlady to get closer to said daughter, then, when the landlady fortuitously dies, kidnap the daughter from camp under the guise of grief and blur those “father figure” lines. Or just buy one of those Himalayan salt lamps.

Abigail Williams
The Crucible

Get the gals together for some good old-fashioned late-night spell-casting. If the conservative townsfolk find out and call you a “witch,” tell them your maid—who you think might be working for the Devil—made you do it, then use this as an opportunity to throw everyone you hate under the bus. It’ll be spring before you know it.

Emma
Emma

Distract yourself with elaborate match-making plans you set up for your “less fortunate” friend. When they don’t pan out, steal the one person your friend really likes for yourself because you deserve it after all that trouble you put yourself through. Plus, this is full-blown cuffing season, y’all. All bets are off.

Nick Carraway
The Great Gatsby

Rather than hole up indoors, connect with your extravagantly wealthy neighbor and proceed to go on several benders where you drink too much, meet interesting women, and learn that money can’t buy happiness. However, if one of those women kills someone in a drive-by, maybe go back to writing your novel for a while.

Lady Anne
Richard III

Mourning a recent passing and the warm, summer months? Marry the guy who killed your former husband, because #agoodmanishardtofind.

Time Traveler
The Time Machine

There’s no better way to combat SAD symptoms than by embarking on a creative project that speaks to your curiosities, like time travel. Just remember, if you end up successfully building a time machine, and traveling to 802,701 A.D., those white apes aren’t friendly, and they don’t care that it’s been months since you’ve pet a dog in the park.

Jane
Jane Eyre

Shake off those dark days by dating someone new. Consider someone you already know, like a work colleague, or your boss, who may or may not have a crazy wife he locks up in the attic because she has a penchant for pyromania and snarling. If you find out he definitely does have such a wife, go to India to recharge and ignore all late-night booty calls from “the moors.”

Hamlet
Hamlet

Pick fights with your family and friends in order to avoid dealing with your own existential crisis. When they call you crazy, write a play about all the bad shit they’ve done and invite them to the world premiere. There will likely be unwarranted criticism, duel challenges, and subsequent bloodshed, but hey, at least you’re off your couch, right?

Underground Man
Notes from the Underground

Embrace your inactivity and pain, and blame the rational egoism of societal systems for your constant state of unhappiness. Deal with your feelings of insignificance by treating friends, women, and random strangers like shit.

Alice
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Microdose LSD.