Environment and Expectations

In her brilliant (and sadly now defunct) fantasy rants, author Limyaael often mentioned her frustration with characters who expressed shock and horror at things like arranged marriage and chores that should have been part of their everyday consciousness. What she's skirting around-- whilst addressing other topics-- is that the characters should be products of their accumulated knowledge and upbringing, not independent of it.

We usually look at worldbuilding from the outside. We create a fantasy world, or research a historical period or a distant country, but chart it's customs and history and daily life as outsiders for whom many things seem strange. However, in our position as the observer, we both incorrectly evaluate the world through our own 21st century morality, and forget that the characters won't be surprised by things that differ wildly from our experiences.

This shows up in two prominent ways. First, there is the orphaned ideology-- ie, a philosophy that a character adopts out of nowhere; second, there is the perpetual alien, a character who is as shocked at their native culture's customs and physical environment as someone who was parachuted in from the author's world.

The orphaned ideology is often Anglo-American 20th-century flavoured feminism, but can also manifest as ideas about class equality, economics, or race relations which appear in the character's head out of nowhere. While it makes sense for someone to notice they are receiving the short end of the stick due to their race, gender or whatnot, it's very weird when they develop fully-formed notions about women's rights or Marxism without having some in-universe buildup (if there is already a group of women publishing pamphlets about how they should be allowed to vote, it makes more sense for the character to pick up on this material and perhaps take it further). And it's critically important for the buildup to make sense in the story's world-- the social forces that created the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s won't be present in a fantasy world, which means thought and action on such issues may take a different direction.

Then there's the character who, like Douglas Adam's birds, are perpetually surprised by typical events around them. (If the character has anterograde amnesia, carry on). Now, this is different than a character having culture shock from experiencing a different aspect of their native society. It would be understandable for someone who has suddenly changed social classes or locations (particularly in a very provincial society) to find new and unexpected things around every corner. But when someone from, say, a society in which arranged marriage is the norm and love matches are practically unheard of expresses shock and horror at her own impending nuptials (and becomes suddenly obsessed with a love match), it wrecks the suspension of disbelief. Unless the character is indeed a time traveller plopped into another century, in which case, carry on.