His father, also named Jean, occupied a modest and poorly paid position in the tax-collecting bureaucracy. In January 1641 Racine's mother, Jeanne Sconin Racine, died while giving birth to her second child, Marie. In February 1643 the children's father, who had remarried three months earlier, also died, leaving Racine and his sister destitute. Their paternal grandparents took charge of the boy, the maternal grandparents of the girl. In October 1649 the young Racine was enrolled as a nonpaying student at the "Petites Ecoles" (Little Schools) in Cheureuse.
The Petites Ecoles were run by the abbey of Port-Royal, a convent of Cistercian nuns. At the time the abbey had two locations, one south of Paris in the Chevreuse valley, known as Port-Royal des Champs, and the other in Paris proper, known as Port-Royal de Paris, located on what is now the Boulevard de Port-Royal. The admission of the penniless and orphaned Racine to the prestigious Petites Ecoles resulted from the close connections that had long existed between the abbey and Racine's family. In 1625 Suzanne Desmoulins, the sister of Racine's paternal grandmother, had been admitted to the convent. In 1642 Agnès Racine, Racine's father's sister, also entered the convent, later becoming its superior as Mère Agnès de Sainte-Thècle.
This is a free page. This page contains 194 words. This
biography contains 7,604 words (approx. 25 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Biography with our Jean Racine Access Pass.
