The former farmhand's obsession with the widow

The former farmhand's obsession with the widow is a rural subplot that changes from an account of apparently pure devotion into a story of dismissal, murder, and arrest. Werther first encounters the farmhand at Walheim and is moved by the intensity of his attachment; months later, he hears how that attachment became uncontrollable and led to violence. The widow's household and her brother's financial interests shape the farmhand's prospects, while Werther's sympathy makes the story a disturbing mirror of his own emotional condition.

Identity and First Encounter

The farmhand is introduced at Walheim, where a gathering beneath the linden trees has left Werther lingering apart from the company. The farmhand comes from a neighboring house to repair part of the same plough Werther had sketched while observing two small children. Werther speaks with him, asks about his circumstances, and soon receives a confidant's account of his service to a young widow. The farmhand says that she values him, but also that she is no longer young and, after being badly treated by her former husband, does not intend to marry again.

Werther understands the farmhand to be deeply in love. The farmhand hopes the widow might choose him and allow him to replace the memory of her previous marriage with a shared life. His feelings appear to Werther in his expression, voice, and gestures, details that the letter-writer says ordinary description cannot adequately convey. The farmhand is particularly anxious that Werther not misunderstand his position or doubt the widow's propriety. Werther's response is not detached observation: the man's tenderness and devotion move him, and Werther says that the recollection continues to kindle his own heart. He considers meeting the widow, then hesitates, preferring to preserve the ideal image formed through the farmhand's loving account.

Escalation and Loss of Control

When Werther later meets the farmhand again, the man has been dismissed and is avoiding the notice of others. He recounts that, after Werther's departure, his passion increased until he could neither manage his actions nor know what to say. He describes being unable to eat, drink, or sleep, feeling suffocated, and involuntarily disobeying the widow's orders. Werther presents these details as the farmhand's account of a fixation that has overtaken his judgment and disrupted his work.

The decisive incident occurs after the farmhand learns that the widow is upstairs. He follows her, or, as he later describes it, feels drawn after her. When she does not respond to his entreaties, he resorts to violence. He cannot explain what happened, but insists that his intentions toward her were honorable and that he wanted them to marry and live together. In recounting the episode, he acknowledges that she had previously encouraged certain confidences and permitted liberties, though the narrative does not specify them. He breaks off several times and tells Werther that he still loves her; he says the account has never before passed his lips and offers it to show that he is not wholly abandoned.

The Widow's Household and the Dismissal

The farmhand's hopes are set against the widow's own stated reluctance to remarry and the interests of her family. Werther learns that her brother has long disliked the farmhand and wants him expelled. Because the widow is childless, the brother fears that a second marriage could diminish the substantial fortune he expects his own children to receive. At his instigation, the widow becomes reserved toward the farmhand, and the farmhand is eventually dismissed.

The matter becomes a public scandal. Even if the widow wished to take the farmhand back, Werther reports, the scandal makes her afraid to do so. She hires another servant, whom her brother also reportedly dislikes. According to the farmhand, the widow is likely to marry this new employee; he declares that he will not survive such an outcome. That anticipated marriage intensifies the farmhand's sense of exclusion, but it is reported as hearsay and as his own expectation, not as a confirmed event. The account thus ties his private attachment to household authority and economic calculation: his position depends not only on the widow's feelings but also on her brother's influence and the inheritance he seeks to protect.

Murder and Arrest

The subplot returns when Werther arrives at the widow's house and finds the household unsettled. He learns that a peasant has been murdered at his own door and that the victim had served the widow; suspicion falls on the person who had formerly held that position. Werther recognizes that this points to the farmhand and hurries to Walheim. At the house where the body has been taken, the familiar threshold and surroundings are now associated with the crime. The contrast with the earlier scene of children playing there makes the change in Werther's perception especially sharp: the same village setting that had held an image of tenderness now bears the consequences of violence.

A crowd gathers near the inn, and armed peasants bring in the arrested farmhand. Werther recognizes him as the former servant whose suppressed anger and despair he had observed. When Werther asks what he has done, the farmhand answers, "No one will now marry her, and she will marry no one." The statement reveals the possessive logic that has come to govern his attachment: preventing the widow's marriage has become more important to him than her freedom or the consequences of his act. The narrative does not present the widow's marriage to the new servant as established; the farmhand's words disclose his own purpose and belief.

Werther's Identification and the Story's Significance

The farmhand's arrest alters Werther's state of mind. His customary melancholy and indifference give way to intense pity and an urgent wish to save the prisoner. Werther considers the crime excusable and believes the farmhand's misfortune resembles his own closely enough that others might be persuaded to see the case as he does. He begins composing a defense and argues it before the judge, who rejects his appeal on the grounds that excusing the crime would undermine the law and public security. Werther's intervention does not change the legal course of the case.

The connection between the two men has been prepared by Werther's earlier admiration of the farmhand's devotion. When recounting the dismissal, Werther compares the farmhand's fate with his own and recognizes the story as a reflection of his own unfulfilled attachment and despair. The parallel is not an equivalence: the farmhand commits murder, while Werther's identification appears in his pity and attempted defense. Still, Werther's tendency to read another person's suffering through his own feelings shapes both his idealization of the farmhand and his judgment of the crime.

The story also complicates Werther's pastoral ideal of Walheim. He finds comfort there among the linden trees, village cottages, and ordinary routines; elsewhere, he values preparing food from the garden and imagines the pleasures of a life sustained by one's own labor. Yet the farmhand's life in this rural setting is structured by employment, family power, and the widow's threatened inheritance. Werther presents the farmhand's attachment as unusually sincere, but its trajectory shows how the ideal of devotion can become entangled with dependence and possessiveness. What begins in Werther's eyes as a portrait of tenderness ends with a man in custody, a widow facing the aftermath of a crime, and Werther drawn more deeply into the belief that another person's ruin resembles his own.