Lispector used her own childhood in the Northeast region of Brazil as reference to build the protagonist Macabéa. She also mentioned a gathering of people from this region in the São Cristóvão neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro, where she first captured the "disoriented look" of the Northeasterners in the city.[4] Lispector was also inspired by a fortune teller she visited, an event upon which she bases the final part of the plot. When she was leaving the fortune teller's house, she found it amusing to imagine herself being hit by a yellow Mercedes and dying immediately after hearing all the good projections the fortune teller foresaw for her future.[4]
The novel was composed from short fragments that Lispector and her secretary, Olga Borelli, pieced together.[6] Lispector was not aware that she was dying at the time she wrote it, though the work is full of premonitions of her upcoming death.
