Those are more old-fashioned words to describe a gown. Even though the younger generation may not understand the language Emily writes with, they did grow up in an era where learning about Dickinson's work is commonplace. Teenagers today read her work throughout high school and college on many different occasions. Older parents and grandparents most probably were not given such in-depth criticism and analysis on her poems. Because of this, the teenagers are able to benefit from all of the research and analysis done on the poems in the past. By already knowing what other people have thought about the writings, it may influence and/or aid their own opinions on the work.
Religion is one other factor that changes how the reader views a particular writing. What you believe in, as far as your faith is concerned, will have a significant impact as to how you view all of Dickinson's poems. "Because I could not stop for Death-," like many others she wrote, seems to concerns the issue of mortality and what lies beyond death. In the Hinduism religion, they view death as a spiritual opportunity to be reincarnated as a part of the natural life cycle. They do not fear death, and they have the mindset to embrace it when it is time to pass. Emily Dickinson writes "We paused before a House that seemed," which infers that the last place they end up in the poem is at a house. The Hindu's might view this as a way of being reincarnated after being taken away by death. After dying in the poem, the speaker ends back up at her original home to start a new life, possibly from the beginning, after being reincarnated. Christians might have a different view on what the "house" in the poem symbolizes. They might view it as a final resting place of some kind for the body, where "the separation of the immortal soul from the mortal body occurs, so that when the body dies the soul lives on" (The Biblical View of Death).