"I slept, indeed, but I was disturbed by the wildest dreams. I thought I saw Elizabeth, in the bloom of health, walking in the streets of Ingolstadt. Delighted and surprised, I embraced her, but as I imprinted the first kiss on her lips, they became livid with the hue of death; her features appeared to change, and I thought that I held the corpse of my dead mother in my arms; a shroud enveloped her form, and I saw the grave-worms crawling in the folds of flannel. " (35)
A shroud is a cloth that a corpse is wrapped in for burial.
Frankenstein has this dream after giving life to the wretch. This dream symbolizes what he thought his creation would be in his head. Before the monster is given life Frankenstein imagines him to be beautiful and great like Elizabeth, but this dream dies away like his mother did. He originally got the idea of creating life from the grave-worms and this idea comes back to haunt him. The grave-worms are eating his mother in his dream just as the monster destroys the rest of his family and friends.
~"shroud." Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. 27 Aug. 2008.
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