I think it's a little more complicated than that, if we acknowledge the masturbatory fugue-state where she tells her husband: "you could never please me as he could."

Millions of women and girls are sexually obsessed with vampires, and it ain't because they find consent exciting.

Ellen Hutter is not just portrayed as a helpless victim of mind control--she is also a depraved sexual weirdo fighting her own urges. Orlok even says: "I am an appetite." Ellen wonders aloud, "Does evil come from within us? Or beyond?"

A woman's sexual urges wreak societal destruction far beyond her marriage. Look at our reaction to Lily Phillips fucking 100 men in one day. I doubt many of the hand-wringers are concerned about her as an individual. The goal (of both conservatives and progressives) seems to be to cast her as a degenerate to minimize the potential damage to our collective control over women.

In Nosferatu, the societal damage is represented by the plague. Ellen's depraved sexual fantasies destroy a nice monogamous family and ultimately threaten to kill everyone in the city. Ellen's husband tries in vain to avert this disaster by sexually roleplaying as Orlok, but he cums after 5 seconds and utterly fails to scratch her maddening itch.

In the end, Ellen does make a sacrifice, but at the same time she gives in to and is completely subsumed by her sexual desires.

I believe the film asks men this question: How do you want your wife? Feverishly tormented and ashamed of her desire to be fucked by anyone but you? Or dead?