Nobody can say definitively, since if the materials that would allow us to form that sort of conclusion ever existed, they are long lost to time and/or the fire (her sister Cassandra burned quite a lot of her things several years before her own death, to prevent them falling into other people's hands). I rather suspect that she thought through the general plot for a while before she began writing. I base that on comments made prior to commencing work on some of her novels. With respect to Emma, family legend has it that she said she was going to take a heroine whom nobody but herself would much like, meaning (I suppose) one who is mistaken and headstrong and, to a certain extent, uninterested in marrying - she was well-off, and said right up front that she had no need to marry, being the mistress already of her father's house and having money. Prior to Mansfield Park, however, she had said she was writing a novel about ordination; while MP does address it a bit (as well as what a proper minister ought to act like), it certainly addresses lots of other issues more prominently.
I think she also cribbed from her own letters (as I've pointed out once already in NA posts) and probably from her own journals, lost to her sister's diligence (based on descriptions of Lyme in Persuasion, among other things).
Nobody can say definitively, since if the materials that would allow us to form that sort of conclusion ever existed, they are long lost to time and/or the fire (her sister Cassandra burned quite a lot of her things several years before her own death, to prevent them falling into other people's hands). I rather suspect that she thought through the general plot for a while before she began writing. I base that on comments made prior to commencing work on some of her novels. With respect to Emma, family legend has it that she said she was going to take a heroine whom nobody but herself would much like, meaning (I suppose) one who is mistaken and headstrong and, to a certain extent, uninterested in marrying - she was well-off, and said right up front that she had no need to marry, being the mistress already of her father's house and having money. Prior to Mansfield Park, however, she had said she was writing a novel about ordination; while MP does address it a bit (as well as what a proper minister ought to act like), it certainly addresses lots of other issues more prominently.
I think she also cribbed from her own letters (as I've pointed out once already in NA posts) and probably from her own journals, lost to her sister's diligence (based on descriptions of Lyme in Persuasion, among other things).
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