Nosferatu Revisited: Monstrous Female Agency in Penny Dreadful

Showtime’s Penny Dreadful proves to be an intertextual tour de force that draws on several literary and filmic sources. This essay argues that F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu – Eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922) constitutes an important filmic intertext and can facilitate a fruitful understanding of the series’ first episode with regard to the representation of its main character Vanessa Ives. Even though almost a hundred years separate one of the prime examples of German expressionist film from this contemporary TV series, the monstrous female agency of Vanessa Ives can be conceptualized and problematized by several narrative and visual congruencies with Nosferatu. After first comparing the almost flawless alignment of heterosexual normative gender categories with the characters of Ellen and Hutter from Nosferatu and Ethan Chandler from Penny Dreadful, Vanessa Ives allows to illustrate an instance of agency, especially via her proclivity for the gaze. Then, the essay turns towards the female acts of transgression in both texts, as they actively gaze at the vampires that they encounter. The confrontation between Ellen and Graf Orlok fulfils an almost paradigmatic formula of female sacrifice and death in film, whereas a similar encounter between Vanessa Ives and a vampire results in the latter’s destruction; a later instance then allows describing her as an instance of the seer. Finally, the essay assesses the critical nature of masculinised female monstrosity on the serial screen and the fruitful possibilities that agency and serialisation might offer.