Culturally this was the heyday of the big Musicals..
Betty Grable, Ginger Rogers, Fred Astair, were cultural icons.
That also takes the sex angle into consideration.. Good girls didn't do it for any other reason than love.
This was before no fault divorce and you didn't commit adultery without tremendous pressures and tremendous consequences.
So biology comes in to play...You really can't help the feeling of the flesh and who you are attracted to but you can choose not to act on those feelings.
That's what Hank did when he refused Dagney the lift to NY.
Proximity leads to temptation..he was avoiding it.
Hank explored it in the chapter with the party..He despises his wife and he despises his physical need for her but he doesn't go outside his marriage.
I'm not sure Hank was always twisted or if his parasite of a wife twisted him but he is.
Hank was twisted by society before he met his wife.
Remember, someone as driven and brilliant as a Hank Rearden would be looked down upon by his “social betters,” which his family considered themselves part of, even though Hank’s wealth is what enabled his family to join that society.
Hank Rearden gave his word, in marriage, to a woman who didn’t appreciate his efforts. His character is such that he follows through on his commitment, even though his wife and family are unworthy of it.
Before World War I, good girls didn't do it at all until their wedding night. They would "spoon" on Mom and Dad's sofa, while Mom and Dad retired to the bedroom -- and when they were just (metaphorically) inches from intercourse, they would rush to get married.
In the Twenties, that changed and in a big way. Good girls did it, usually in the rumbleseat of their boyfriend's Huppmobile. Automobiles became bedrooms on wheels to the point where, in East Texas, the KKK would patrol the local parking spots and administer the horsewhip to teenagers caught in flagrante delecto. (Talk about family values!)
In the Thirties, sex outside of marriage became a protest of bourgeois morality, and in the Forties, it was de rigeur because a girl didn't know if her soldier boyfriend would come back alive or not.
In the Fifties, after 30 years of non-stop social change, people went back to pre-World War I standards. In New York, divorce was impossible unless one could prove adultery -- which led to hired photographers breaking down the doors to love nests. (In the Sixties, that all went out the window.)
I'm not sure Hank was always twisted or if his parasite of a wife twisted him but he is.
It was his wife. It becxomes clearer later in the book.