Being a historical reinactor has played hob with my ability to understand that most people don't have a mental gallery of what the time period would look like.

I have similar issues from having read historical fiction (and a lot of historical fact) by preference all my life. I discovered halfway through my last book that one of my writers group members was picturing my women in big Victorian hoopskirts. And another is always asking questions like why Anna is wearing a hat when it seems like it'd be more comfortable/practical without one, or which is higher ranking out of a duke and an earl. I have to keep reminding myself those actually aren't stupid questions for someone who hasn't studied much history or read historical novels. But I'm still not going to explain that kind of thing within the text, partly because 99% of my readership if I'm ever published will be people who already read historical romance and have some prior knowledge, and also because I use fairly deep POV, which limits how much I can explain anything my characters take for granted.

Thanks, SusanW. If no one (Edith Wharton) had ever embedded these cues in the text, I would know nothing about social hierarchies.

Not that the subject is less opaque to me today.

This may be a first: A drabble inspired by "True Hollywood Story" and one of my first ever experiments with RPF(I saw the arresting detective on TV. So, yeah, not from life...this life, anyway.)
Arresting Mary Kay

Detective Pat couldn’t believe it as she brought the suspect in from the middle school. The last thing she looked like was a baby-raper, with her pink smocked dress and freshly lipsticked mouth. She looked like teacher of the year. Pat never wore much makeup, just a little powder. It wasn’t really her style and she didn’t need to be known as “Hollywood” around the squad or anything like that, especially not working sex crimes. Let’s just say, on her job, you didn’t want a lot of attention. Mary Kay gets in the car like she doesn’t know how jammed up she is, which is so depressing Pat wants to smoke all of the tobacco in Virginia. They have letters, lady, she wants to yell, all about you creaming for some twelve-year-old. Do you mind reacting a little, please? The thought crosses Pat’s mind that this might be the teacher who taught Vili to write and she wants to toss her morning coffee at the thought. The feeling passes but not the urge to take seven minutes off her life.
“Do you mind if I smoke?” Pat says, not really asking.

“I’d rather you didn’t,” Mary says, smiling angelically and rubbing the bump.

Oh, yeah, Pat thinks. Don’t want to screw it up or anything.

Thanks, SusanW. If no one (Edith Wharton) had ever embedded these cues in the text, I would know nothing about social hierarchies.

Thing is, I think I am embedding cues in the text. But sometimes they go over my readers' heads, and then what are you going to do? You can drop hints, you can put characters outside of their normal environment and have them notice the differences, but what you can't do is have them explain the historical and sociological rationale for something they take as much for granted as I do tying my shoe or flipping a lightswitch.

Well, I think you can put these cues into the text.

I'm not poking, OK? I'm just saying that I am not a contemporary of Edith Wharton (Really! Old, am I, not moldy !), but I still got the entire context of her stuff. If I were inclined to analyze why I got it, I would say it was the longish asides about the meanings of things.

Brutal but loving thing: It is not the audiences' fault.

(Can I say anything else to further ruin my popularity? Probably. Give me a minute.)

Yeah...doesn't have to be all huge and exposition-y. Like on The Wire, they don't really translate corner-speak...the first few times you totally have to understand from the response.(looking at the hierarchy thing from, well, the bottom, as I tend to do.) Now picturing Austen characters wanting "juice" and "mad props." (at least I amuse me, right?)

Well, the problem is that the audience isn't homogenous, you know? Last night two members of my writers group got in an argument over whether or not I should cut a historical reference. One thought it added richness to the scene; the other said it pulled her out of the story. What clarified for one person confused another. You can't win. So I write the kind of book I like to read myself, albeit with one eye on the market and, for lack of a better word, the industry standard for things like how much historical explanation to include. I really don't see how I could do any different.

I get you, Susan. There are references that pull you in, because you have the context, and references that stop you dead, because you don't.

When a piece assumes I have the context, I'm enamored. Like erikaj remarks, though, when the piece slips me the context ahead of time, then slips me the reference, I don't just feel enamored. I feel pretty.

One bit of advice I picked up from David Eddings' talking about his fantasy work was the usefulness of the Clueless Hero, the bumpkin who's been thrown into a strange new world who needs things explained to him. You can go overboard, of course, explaining things, but if you really feel you need to clarify something about history or society, you can have Clueless get out of his depth and need help.

I do my best to slip in the context, but, like almost everything in writing, it's a balancing act. If I include enough explanation for Reader A never to get confused by anything, Reader B will accuse me of stopping the story every few pages for a research dump.

And my writers group is an interesting test ground because none of them read what I write recreationally. And in some ways that makes them good first readers--they're not coming to the text with a big set of assumptions from every other historical romance they've read. But OTOH, I have to keep in mind that at least 90% of my actual target market if and when I sell this book IS regular readers of historical romance. So if the writers group makes a suggestion that feels way off to me, I try not to dismiss it right away, but I'll check with a critique partner or beta reader who's familiar with my genre before making a major change.