A Psychological Criticism of the “Evil Mother” Archetype in Sadegh Hedayat’s Stories

In the series of research and psychological criticism of Sadegh Hedayat’s works, the issue of the evil mother among his various fictional characters deserves a separate study. The term “evil mother” derives from the dual aspect of the mother’s archetype in mythological psychology, which has been applied to the realm of humanities studies by the theories of Freud and Jung and their students. Hedayat depicted the evil mother and the consequences of her presence in the lives of the main characters of his stories in the novel Buf-e-kur (The Blind Owl) with the fluid character of the narrator’s mother (narrator’s aunt / narrator’s aunt’s daughter), in the short story Se ghatre khun (three drops of blood) with the character of Rokhsareh (evil woman), in Abji Khanom (Mrs. Abji), with the character of Abji’s mother, in Zani ke mardash ra gom kard (the woman who lost her husband) with the character of Zarrin Kolah’s mother and Zarrin Kolah herself, and in his two unpublished stories with the characters of the mother of the spider and the mother of the murdered man. Adopting a descriptive-analytical method, the present article investigates the power of the evil mother’s influence on the tragic fate of the characters in Hedayat’s works (mother complex, psychosis, suicide, homicide). The findings indicated that there are symbols with the supporting role of the evil mother in Hedayat’s stories. Hence, the influence of the evil mother in the lives of the main characters is predictable i.e., confrontation with the mother, psychosis, suicide and homicide are repeated fates of characters in these stories.