Peter Seng on Ophelia's Most Erratic Behavior

Recently, I have come across an article in "Royals Weekly" that speaks of Ophelia's rather strange behaviors as of late. I found it to be an accurate account and portayal of this occurrance. He states the cause of Ophelia's madness as a combination of being "all alone at Elsinore"(Seng 218), being introduced to "the habit of mistrust"(Seng 220), and because her brother and father did not take care of her as they should have.
     Ophelia's madness being in part due to the fact that she is alone could be seen as reasonable. If I think about it, there's truly no one in Elsinore that she can trust. Her father is dead, killed by Hamlet, who has not spoken to her since the play, and her brother has only "in secret come from France"(4.5.88). She truly is all alone, at least mentally, spiritually, and emotionally. She doesn't even have the "beauteous Queen of Denmark"(4.5.21), since she seems to be avoiding poor Ophelia. There is positively no one to help her get through "the poison of deep grief" (4.5.75).
     It probably does not help the poor girl that her sense of self has been completely turned around by her father and brother's mistrust of all men. This comes as "a shock to her gentle nature"(Seng 220). Laertes tells her that Hamlet will use her, and only break her heart. Polonius tells her that he knows of how easily men hurt young women by pursuing them for one thing, if you catch my drift. Yet, in the end, it isn't as if they took such great care of her to be able to chide Hamlet in any way. In actuality,  they probably did much more damage than Hamlet did, by planting such seeds of doubt in her trusting mind. She thought she knew who she was and what she stood for, until Polonius was telling her things like "you do not understand yourself so clearly" (1.3.96). What else is a delicate girl like Ophelia going to do, besides lose her mind, when everyone she cares about is telling her to be someone else, and that she's wrong all the time.
     Perhaps if her father and brother had paid less attention to what he suspected of Hamlet and more of what Hamlet was showing towards his daughter, they wouldn't have tried turning Ophelia against Hamlet and against herself. When it's all said and done, the mad Ophelia alludes to her own brother as a "false steward, that stole his master's daughter"(4.5.172). My opinion, and Seng's as well, is that she was speaking of how her brother failed to take care of her, as did her father.
     This magazine sure seems to know what it is that they're talking about, or at least Sir Peter Seng certainly does. I agree with his idea of how Ophelia came to madness through loneliness, being forced to doubt herself and her relationships, and because her brother and father did not take care of her as they should have. The poor creature. Hamlet must be devastated.