I’de be the Elegant Lady who is secretely a spy. It’d be great fun.
I’d be either a wealthly spinster or wealthy widow living in a huge house on a hill surrounded by acres of beautiful gardens. I would create quite a scandal in the town by refusing to ride sidesaddle and also for carrying on most undecorously with the handsome young gardener.
Great thread, btw. Reminds me of one of my favorite threads:Ye Olde SDMB Society of Fantsy-Pantses and Debutates
Whatever happen to our dear old society, anyway? 
I’d be the wild-eyed young scientist’s assistant. I would clutch my books close to my body, wear old, rumpled clothes and move with quick, birdlike flailings. I would speak in a low, carefully controlled voice and recite lines of poetry in the grand traditon of Gurney Halleck. I would be quietly married, or at least engaged, but I would be torn between my work and my wife.
In the end, I’d kill the scientist and run away with my wife to a far-off country and live our days out hermit-style.
I’d be the troubled Urban detective who hunts serial killers by having absinthe-induced prophecies and goes to opium houses to get high and grope women 
I’d be the highly intelligent, sophisticated, utterly amoral villain - like Professor Moriarty. I’d alternate between groundbreaking research and audacious acts of grandf theft and other villainy - yet my Victorian code of honor would insure I was always a perfect gentleman to the fairer sex. And I’d stay the hell away from Baker Street.
Incubus, could you send some of that absinthe my way? Mmm…absinthe…
Oh, and an addendum to my earlier role choice: I might, or might not, discover that my entire world is in fact an elaborate simulation being run on an interstellar spacecraft for the amusement of the crew. I haven’t decided yet. But if I do, of course, then I’ll find some fiendishly clever way to hold the crew hostage until they find a way to allow me to escape the simulation - or at least convince me I have.
I’d probably be a poor girl working in one of the factories/farms, trying to keep my numerous brothers and sisters out of the workhouse.
I would be a stuffy, proper gentlemen, with pretentions of being accepted by high society, but in truth a mere junior member of the firm. At home, I would be surrounded by several caterwauling children and a wife who looks out at the garden in quiet desperation until one day when a handsome stranger happens to knock upon our door…
Col. Simington Smythe-Beddows, 2nd Ghurka Rifles (Retired), spending my retirement in Africa hunting big game along with my faithful gunbearer and ex-Lance Naik Gupta.
I will of course return to the army at the beginning of the Great War and buy the farm leading a valiant yet ill-conceived charge at Mons.
I’d be the tormented genius composer furiously scribbling symphonies in some garret.
A hydraulic engineer, missing one thumb, who has a fascinating story to tell at dinner-parties.
Do have to choose from just Dickens or Balzac? Because either way I’d get stuck having a shitty childhood and then being screwed in business.
Who was the rougue described by Sir Richard Burton as wanting to own a bible bound with leather made from the vulvas of little girls? I’d be at dinner parties with these types, or sleeping off the effects.
I’d be a nautical Hornblower type. You know, sailing the high seas as a Captain in the Queen’s Navy, solving cricises by manlily squaring my jaw and being completely unflappable, blockading Indian ports when the natives get restless, gunboat diplomacy, taking parties of doomed explorers to Antarctica. That kind of thing.
[Booming Captain’s Voice] Full steam ahead, Mr. Ambrose. Forward battery make ready to fire. [/Booming Captain’s Voice]
I’d be the frontier pioneer woman. I’d split logs, slaughter hogs, salt pork, and break sod. I’d spin my own homespun and put up beans.
And I’d be the gal with the generous bosom and luscious lips down at the local saloon. Satin and lace low cut gowns with big bustles, side arm under my garter. Drinking whiskey with the gamblers, outlaws and oh yes, and those strapping frontier pioneer men too. 
*Ooh I can hear the piano player now. *
(Wow. This could be a fun BBS game.)
I’d be the dusty American gunslinger, completely out of place among the rest of you stiff-collared English buffoons. A constant whiskey-induced haze belies my quick mind and quicker tongue.
I’d also have a quiet sidekick of unknown oriental ancestry who, despite my belief that he’s an imbecile, serves to get me out of trouble more often than not, using subtle yet impressive acts of martial prowess.
Curse my unlucky gambling streak!
I would be Falstaff. Sure, he was from the 15th century, but he’s timeless.
If that’s cheating, then I would be the Pudd’nhead Wilson type. I’ve got the lawyer thing down and I’m considered by most to be a fool, but hopefully one day I’ll rise up and be the hero!
Of course, I live in a different age than Wilson, so instead of collecting fingerprints I have been collecting hair samples (and urine samples as well, but that’s just a hobby).
I would be an heiress to a vast fortune in England, owner of incredibly large manor homes and bored, bored, bored with society life and the pressure to marry one of the ton.
The fortune hunters have pockets and attics to let, if you know what I mean.
So I hie away to my desolate scottish estate, * Ferlachtarliebern *( pronounced Luxury Yacht) to discover the handsome, barechested under gardner sporting a gold earring, smirking smile and devilish sense of humor is really the Third Earl of Wichesterercheshire (pronounced Bob) and hiding from his matching making mama and fortune hunters himself.
Well, I’d like to think that I’d end up being the harmless, lovable old “Bachelor Scholar,” the Dr. Livesley/Squire Trelawney type. Puttering around my old family mansion in a dressing gown, gathering together tomes of arcane information and adding on to my collection of miniature ornithopters.
This means, of course, that in real life I’d end up as an impoverished Irish immigrant who’d end up with brain damage from an unsuccessful attempt at prize-fighting, before dying of “Black Lung” in a coal mine in West Virginia.
Or the grizzled old “ranch hand” with a bum leg, a trusty shotgun, and a voice like either Walter Brennan or Pat Buttram. And an “endearing” nickname to match, like “Stubby Pete” or “Snakegut Joe” or “Stumps McGillicutty” something.
Well, 1 out of 3 ain’t bad. 