Power: the greatest love.

We have at the core of the strip Elly, a vain and stupid woman who has a great but un-admitted and inadmissable need for power over her surroundings. She also misinterprets 'right' and 'wrong' to mean what ever makes her feel comfortable, stemming from her belief the world was arranged solely for her benefit. The result is she becomes something of a petty tyrant. Her particular brand of aggression manifests itself in two key ways. Much as Sam Gamgee referred to Gollum as Slinker and Stinker, she may be referred to as Screamy and Weepy. Her remarkable tendency to force people to do want she wants by standing around bellowing is almost legendary. Owing to her lack of insight and morals, she interprets what normal people see as her shell-shocked victims trying to placate the crazy woman with the potato growing out of her face as the triumph of truth and justice. This has an interesting side-effect that also screws up her life: her horrific vulnerability to flattery. Blow enough smoke up her arse and tell her how great she is and she'll gleefully let you slit her throat.
The other weapon in her arsenal is far more insidious and manipulative: maudlin weeping about her problems. Being strong enough to shout down a screaming afreet is one thing but you'd have to have a lot of balls to stiff-arm a walking tear-duct. By these means, she's bludgeoned her husband into some sort of slavery and destroyed any desire for independence in her oldest two children. In the real world, this sort of stunt is a cry for help. Both Lynn and Elly, however, regard seeking help as a sign of weakness.