#freudian repression

“Nosferatu as a double of Ellen […] a symbol for Ellen's repressed sexual desire of being in a marriage absent of passion and affection. Ian Roberts notes that “she is very much a plaything of Hutter and the patriarchal society within her repressed self is trapped”. She does not seem to do anything but wait around for Hutter […] she feels dissatisfaction with life. In addition, the affection that she displays for Hutter does not appear to be returned. […] she is stuck in this marriage because gender norms of the time […].

The cinematography portrays Ellen as desiring Nosferatu. […] she is “pining for her beloved”. But there is a subtle uncertainty of who exactly her “beloved” actually is. […] Ellen sleepwalks quite often throughout the film, and dreams often signify repressed desire. […] the [camera] perspective suggests that the person that she talks about is not Hutter, but rather Nosferatu. The “restless sea” is a commonly used symbol of desire and repression. Indeed, Ellen often waits by the sea even though she knows Hutter is travelling by land. This crosscutting reveals Ellen's desire for Nosferatu rather than Hutter. The cinematic subtly of the representation of Ellen desiring Nosferatu reflects her own need to repress this desire because of the gender norms of the time that restricts female sexuality.

[…] Ellen does not sacrifice her sexuality for Nosferatu, but rather she acts on her repressed sexual desire. […] signifies the end of the repression of her sexual desire. The fact that his hand is represented as a shadow signifies the guilt that Ellen feels because this sexual desire should have been repressed.”

— Caitlyn Zimmer; “The Portrayal of Queer Subjectivity in German Vampire Film” (2006)

“While it is unclear to what extent [Bram] Stoker was aware that his vampire represents the evil or repressed fantasies of his characters, it is the case that the associations of violence with madness and vampirism with sexuality are typical in the Gothic. True to the nature of the Gothic, Dracula is the external representation of Renfield's insanity, Lucy and Mina's sexuality, and Harker's episodes both of delirium and passivity […] vampirism is associated not only with death, immortality, and orality, but also with sexuality.

Further, in psychoanalytic terms, the vampirism is a manifestation of greatly desired and equally strongly feared fantasies. These fantasies have encouraged critics to point to the Oedipus complex at the center of the novel. Dracula, for example, is seen as the “father-figure of huge potency”.

— Phyllis A. Roth; “Suddenly Sexual Women in Bram Stoker’s Dracula” (in “Dracula: Criticism” edited by Nina Auerbach and David J. Skal, 1997)

“[F.W.] Murnau was alleged to be a homosexual himself, and [Nosferatu] seems to aestheticize his inner struggles of being homosexual in a country where homosexuality is criminalized and pathologized. At this time sex acts between two males were outlawed by paragraph 175 of the German penal code. In addition, during this time period there was an explosion of discourses surrounding the connection between sexuality and psychology. For example, the German psychologist Richard von Kraft-Ebing published the book “Psychopathia Sexualis” which catalogued a range of “perversions” including homosexuality. The themes of queer sexuality in his films are often subtly revealed, yet repressed.

Nosferatu's transgression of gender and sexual norms is presented as something to fear with his utilization of the fear of the uncanny. By looking at Nosferatu as the double of Hutter, we can understand how Nosferatu comes to represent the homosexual desires that Hutter seeks to repress. The homoerotism between Hutter and Nosferatu is rather explicit and obvious. […] “As soon as the sun rose, Hutter too was freed from the shadows of the night”. The “shadows” seem to imply shared homosexual exchanges of desire that the narrator and Hutter feel should be repressed, and indeed, he does repress it. […] Perhaps by focusing on the psychology of Hutter and his queer desire in Nosferatu, one could argue that film participates in a discourse that seeks to posit Hutter's desire as natural.”

— Caitlyn Zimmer; “The Portrayal of Queer Subjectivity in German Vampire Film” (2006)