Agree completely on that point, AntiBoop. He said to Helen a day or two after that first time 'We got a bit carried away, didn't we' with that awful little laugh. I suppose in an abuser's mind there is little difference between 'we' and 'I'. The other person's feelings and desires count for nothing, and indeed in the mind of the true psychopathy they don't even register.
Rob knows best on all points, so when Helen said she wasn't ready to have another child, in his mind it was OK to ignore that because obviously she was just being silly and wimpish.
Very interesting points about Ursula. Thinking about abused children, I often wonder at what point it's right to stop giving them the benefit of the doubt because of what they've been through, and the same applies to abused adults, I suppose. Given that they don't often get good access to good mental health care to try to reverse the effects of what's happened to them, how justifiable is it to come down with the full force of the law if they become abusers in turn, or complicit in someone else's abuse? Abuse is all about taking away somebody's confidence and ability to make decisions, so it's very harsh to punish them for their inability to make good decisions in adult life - but then on the other hand, not all abuse victims go on to become abusers, so if some people manage it, why can't all of them?
I've also been thinking in respect of Ursula about societies/families/villages with an age-old tradition of young women being treated abysmally by their husband's families, especially the older women. I'm thinking of Wild Swans, for example. What keeps the young women going seems to be the thought that if they can survive till old age they will get their turn to be the vicious old matriarch. It seems to me that Ursula may have been thinking like that. I wonder how she gets on with Miles's wife.