Robert Peters wrote (an insightful analysis of his understanding of the
first song in Schubert's *Winterreise* (a favorite of mine also), in which
he viewed the narrating wanderer as a person arousing pity and compassion
for his friendless, solitary state):

>we know his personal and even existential fate through this wonderfully
>dense formula of unlucky socialisation.  He tells us about a wonderful May,
>about prospects of love and happiness - and now all light and hope have
>vanished ("Nun ist die Welt so truebe" - Now the world is dim/bleak), he
>is to wander in winter snow.  This first stanza is a fantastic exposition,
>using the stark contrast of May and winter to illustrate the poetic I's
>fall from grace.  He came as a stranger (like we all do), he had all hopes
>to stay as son and husband, now he is a stranger again in the hostile and
>dead surroundings of a winter landscape - a moving and depressing image
>of the existential plight of man (and certainly not Goethe's conviction
>of man as a Wanderer guided by Nature as shown in Wanderer's Sturmlied or
>Der Wanderer).  The Wanderer of the Romantiker is in most cases an unhappy
>creature wandering from loss to loss, guided by false hopes, ending in
>despair or death.  The second stanza deepens this depressing image: there
>is no choice when to start the journey although it is winter ...  Now
>the focus shifts from the actual situation of the unhappy and unwilling
>Wanderer to musings about his fate.  In this third stanza a lot of
>different emotions mingle: pain, pride, courage, despair, resignation,
>irony, even cynicism.  He has no choice, he cannot stay, he is unwelcome -
>he has to go, if he doesn't they will drive him away - the very people he
>wanted to be kin with!  Okay, he goes, he is no mad dog who strays outside
>his master's house.

Somehow, the narrator has ingratiated himself w/ the girl and her mother;
he even gets to stay in their house, which he leaves by stealth.  Why don't
we read this as the tale of a would-be Don Juan, who has had his way w/
the girl after securing the approval of the mother, leading them both to
believe his intentions were honorable, after which, not really wanting to
face up to his responsibilities, he sneaks out of the house in the dead of
night, and feels sorry for himself, not the girl, for 23 more Lieder?

It's still a beautiful song cycle.

Walter Meyer