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Examples of strong-minded women on the Victorian stage abounded from the 1850s. This coincides in time with a specific use of the term which pejoratively refers to a typified woman who challenges traditional values in the second half of the nineteenth century. The cases of study that I present in this article reveal how a close examination of the strong-minded woman as a theatrical role allows theatre historians to map the aestheticized history of the Woman Question on the Victorian stage as a mirror of the social stereotypes of the time. As I shall contend, the theatrical strong-minded woman is a recurring topos which widens the scope of stock female characters available on stage between the 1850s and the 1870s as a precedent for the New Woman. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]