More, More: Desire, Autonomy, and the Feminine in Nosferatu
There’s a very long and complex history of vampire storytelling being used to tap into real truths about society and the history of female oppression. Absorbing life and fluids, their immortal, parasitic nature allows us to examine the narratives surrounding them as representatives of historical change. From the aristocratic, Victorian menace of Dracula (1897) to the grotesque shadow of Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922), through the glittering, (obnoxiously sexy) romance of Twilight, and now back to Nosferatu in 2025, vampires have always shapeshifted to mirror society’s deepest anxieties – each iteration revealing what we fear, what we desire, and ultimately what we choose to immortalize.
Vampire narratives have historically framed women’s bodies as sites of consumption, objects to be taken or possessed. Think Bella Swan’s slender, trembling body that is fiercely protected by the same men that desire her with violence-laced passion. There were so few cultural outlets that validated young female desire without simultaneously fetishizing their submission to powerful men. And yet, scholars like Nina Auerbach have been encouraging women since 1995 to look to the horror genre for a literature of their own. She urges us to reject the characterization of vampirism as “a boy’s game,” reclaiming it for “a female tradition.”
In all honesty, I sat there frozen in my seat after watching Robert Eggers latest rendition of Nosferatu. As the credits rolled and theatre lights flickered back to life, I remember muttering half to myself and half to my best friend Hanz, “I’m going to be thinking about this movie for a while.” I didn’t realize it then, but I realize it now: the film resonated so deeply because, on some subconscious level, I saw myself in Ellen. Not the victim Ellen, but the Ellen who confronts the delicate interplay between dark and light, between surrender and strength. Hear me out.
The Ellen of our age no longer lingers in Nosferatu’s shadow. While it’s true that both Murnau and Eggers’ iterations saw Ellen sacrifice herself, this version frames sacrifice as a powerful act of autonomy and conscious choice. Compared with its predecessor, Eggers expands on Ellen’s agency as a central figure whose story arc moves the entire narrative forward. From the opening frame to the film’s haunting final shot, we watch her challenge traditional narratives of passivity by making active choices (impulsive and shortsighted, purposeful and and melancholic) about her body and desires – even when it means embracing sacrifice as an assertion of control rather than resignation.
This becomes painfully clear when we pick up on the recurring motifs in the film. There’s often an intimate relationship between the opening and closing scene, and Nosferatu is no exception. Everything is tied back to the opening scene, when young Ellen offers her body and devotion to a loathsome beast, one that later declares “I am an appetite. Nothing more.” And so, throughout the film he becomes a manifestation of the shame Ellen felt about her appetite – which is why we have the whole plague subplot. Sexual appetite was considered a sickness that would bring the downfall of civilization. Desire must be controlled, contained, disciplined. But the closing scene presents the ultimate paradox: the very thing feared as civilization’s downfall becomes its salvation. Only when Ellen confronts her darkness does she step into the light and save humanity with her “willing sacrifice.”
“And though the maiden fair did offer up her love unto the beast, and with him lay in close embrace until the first cock crow, her willing sacrifice thus broke the curse and freed them from the plague of Nosferatu”
This presents yet another spin on the earlier film, where “only a woman can break his frightful spell, a woman pure in heart, who will offer her blood freely.” In this version, no “purity” is required. Instead, it takes a “maiden fair” to “offer up her love unto the beast,” a framing that is much less about vulnerability and innocence and more about power and choice. Ellen is no longer a martyr, she is a savior.
Eggers himself validates this characterization when he draws parallel between the visceral closing image and the Renaissance era ‘Death and the Maiden’ motif. Over time, we’ve seen this theme take on different manifestations to reflect societal attitudes towards mortality and feminine power. When Ellen is faced with death, she pushes his head onto her breasts, urging him to drink “more, more.” She deliberately weaponizes her body in an act that becomes much less about erasure and more about imposing presence.
The visual language of the scene speaks louder than words: from the gory splatters of blood to the decaying purple lilacs, his body weight pressing down on hers, yet the camera does not shy away from Ellen’s face. It is as much her final scene as it is Nosferatu’s. It is not a moment of surrender, it is one of glistening triumph. Her body is bold and defiant. Her blood, echoing menstrual anxieties, becomes a symbol of the cycle of life and the liminal space between love and destruction. In the end, the maiden defies death by determining the terms of her submission. She bled so that others could bloom.
Nina Auerbach says every age gets the vampire it deserves. I’d take this a step further – every age gets the vampire it creates, shaped by the fears, desires, storytellers of its time, and the medium of communication. Vampires were once whispered about in folklore as reflections of what societies feared most. And more often than not, what they feared was desire – something to be controlled, contained, disciplined, even exorcised.
But what happens when you stop fearing it? When you stop treating desire as something to be resisted and instead surrender to it not as weakness, but as a deliberate choice? To give yourself fully, to feel without shame, to offer without fear of depletion? That is strength. That is power. Because to give is to be abundant. And while that abundance should never be taken for granted, the ability to decide who, how, and when to offer it is radical agency, especially when that giving carries the weight of something greater than the self, something that heals, something that saves.
For my final frame, I’ll leave you with one of my favorite quotes by Hélène Cixous from The Laugh of Medusa (1975):
“We the precocious, we the repressed of culture, our lovely mouths gagged with pollen, our wind knocked out of us, we the labyrinths, the ladders, the trampled spaces, the bevies-we are black and we are beautiful. We’re stormy, and that which is ours breaks loose from us without our fearing any debilitation. Our glances, our smiles, are spent; laughs exude from all our mouths; our blood flows and we extend ourselves without ever reaching an end; we never hold back our thoughts, our signs, our writing; and we’re not afraid of lacking”
Citations and other cool relevant works:
[1] Auerbach, Nina. Our Vampires, Ourselves / Nina Auerbach. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. Print.
[2] Vickers, Nancy J, and Marjorie Garber. “HÉLÈNE CIXOUS from ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’ (1975) Translated by Keith Cohen and Paula Cohen A Classic of Feminist Theory.” Medusa Reader. United Kingdom: Routledge, 2003. 149–166.
[3] I’d also highly recommend a reading of Robert Eggers’ interview with NYT: “With ‘Nosferatu,’ Robert Eggers Raises the Stakes.”