Most romantic heroine

Anne Elliot (Persuasion, Jane Austen)

Hold on to your hat... Sally Hawkins stars as Anne Elliot in ITV1's adaptation of Persuasion. Photograph: Nick Briggs/PR

Forget lippy Lizzie Bennett and mooning Marianne Dashwood; Persuasion's Anne Elliot is a complex, clever woman with a past who deserves a far more glorious place in the literary hall of fame. In her tentative, subtle and brilliantly funny journey back to the man she loved and lost eight years before, Anne gives us hope that love is not just for pretty teens; that second chances exist; and that ordinary lives really can be transformed by intelligence, independence and decency. Strike a blow for the quiet one in the corner and help crown Anne our romantic queen.

Jane Eyre (Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte)

Ruth Wilson (left) as Jane Eyre in a BBC production of the classic Bronte novel. Photograph: BBC

There's more to Charlotte Bronte's unassuming schoolmistress than you might initially think. One of life's meek, mild maidens on the surface, Jane is all boiling repressed sexuality within; but she cunningly confines her wild, dark, passionate side to the attic of her soul in order to maintain her pristine image as virtuous Victorian victim. The girl got spirit, but she knows that modest compliance and virginal restraint are always going to win with an alpha male like Edward Rochester. After all, reader, she married him. And got the big country pile. All hail Jane.

Tess D'Urberville (Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy)

Gemma Arterton as the long-suffering Tess d'Urberville in a BBC production. Photograph: BBC

Of all the literary women who have suffered in the pursuit of love, Tess is undoubtedly head girl. Shakespeare's star-crossed lovers face nothing compared to the rape, abandonment, poverty, infant death, murder and eventual hanging that Hardy's hardy heroine endures, all with the bewildered sweetness of a beaten Labrador. However, our Tess is no spotless maiden in an ivory tower. Throughout this intense, sensuous novel she grafts, shags, lies and kills to get her man, slowly becoming steeped in a mixture of milk, bile, tears and blood - surely the most romantic cocktail of all time? Say yes to Tess.

Becky Sharpe (Vanity Fair, William Thackeray)

Reese Witherspoon fans the flames as Becky Sharpe. Photograph: Alamy

In the honourable tradition of Henry Fielding's Tom Jones, Becky is more romantic anti-hero than heroine. A flawed and fun-loving adventuress, her opportunism and ambition takes us on a whirlwind ride through bawdy, bustling 19th century society free from pious moralising, ruddy cheeked cow milking or self-pitying sorrow. Of course, we're supposed to disapprove, but Becky refuses to apologise as she flirts, gambles, philanders and laughs in the face of a world that abandoned and abused her as a helpless child. She is an irrepressible, inexcusable life force no hero can tame: show your support for this thoroughly modern miss.

Cleopatra (Antony and Cleopatra, William Shakespeare)

Nice hair do. Elizabeth Taylor stars as Cleopatra. Photograph: Allstar/Cinetext Collection/Sportsphoto

Cleopatra has been an icon of exotic womanhood for centuries, but it was the man from Stratford who really brought her to unforgettable life. Dix points for arriving up the Nile in a golden barge with perfumed purple sails; dix points for bewitching Rome's greatest soldier with hissy fits, sex and wine; dix points for defying the greatest nation on earth and bowing out via asp. In Shakespeare's spectacular play, Cleopatra gives us a masterclass in how to mould a living legend from fragrant human flesh. Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety: choose Cleo.