Put yourself in the shoes of Thomas Cromwell in Wolf Hall or Alice Dubois in The Alice Network, or Tom Bilder in The Pillars of the Earth. Through historical fiction, we imagine their lives, appreciate their constraints, understand the emotions and people that drive their behaviour. It’s a gift to dive into the past and learn about the people who lived there.
Historical fiction bridges the gap between abstract historical knowledge and lived human experience. By bringing readers into the emotional, social, and moral worlds of people from the past, historical fiction allows history to be felt, not just understood. Such feelings and understanding for people from long-ago worlds create empathy.
Let’s look at the topic from a few different perspectives.
Humanizing the past
Traditional history – the kind we learn in school of through works of non-fiction – often emphasizes dates, events, and outcomes. This focus can unintentionally flatten individuals into symbols or statistics. Historical fiction restores the individuals involved, whether famous figures or everyday characters. When readers follow a character’s fears, hopes, and relationships, they begin to see historical actors not as distant “others” but as people responding to constraints and pressures much like their own. Such humanization is the foundation of empathy.
Appreciating perspectives otherwise marginalized or silenced
Many groups—women, enslaved people, colonized populations, the poor—left limited written records or were marginalized by dominant voices. Historical fiction can imaginatively reconstruct these perspectives using careful research and giving voice to lives that official archives often neglect. While fictional, such stories invite readers to consider lives that have been lost and foster understanding of structural injustice.
Experiencing moral complexity in context
Historical fiction excels at portraying ethical dilemmas within the customs, attitudes and values of a specific time. Readers encounter characters whose beliefs clash with modern values, yet make sense within their historical context. Reading such stories encourages moral imagination: the ability to understand how context – in this case, the context of the past – shapes choices.
Emotional engagement with a buffer
Historical fiction activates emotional responses—grief, anxiety, longing, despair. When readers emotionally invest in characters, they are more likely to retain historical knowledge and reflect on its relevance to present-day issues such as war, migration, racism, or gender inequality. Historical settings often provide a buffer that allows readers to engage empathetically with difficult topics. This buffer allows for understanding without trauma.
Creating parallels between past and present
By dramatizing recurring human experiences—love under constraint, survival in crisis, resistance to tyranny—historical fiction helps readers recognize the present in the past. Such parallels can illuminate today’s problems and provide ideas for solutions to those problems.
Historical fiction fosters empathy by transforming the past from a static record into a lived emotional experience. It invites readers not only to ask what happened, but what it felt like. Ultimately, the understanding that emerges from historical fiction can change how we see others – both then and now.
I’d love to learn of novels that have changed your perspective of those living in long-ago times. Let me know in the comments.
FOR MORE ON READING & WRITING HISTORICAL FICTION FOLLOW A WRITER OF HISTORY. There’s a SUBSCRIBE function on the right hand side of the page.
M.K. Tod writes historical fiction. Her latest novel THAT WAS THEN is a contemporary thriller. Mary’s other novels, THE ADMIRAL’S WIFE, PARIS IN RUINS, TIME AND REGRET, LIES TOLD IN SILENCE and UNRAVELLED are available from Amazon, Nook, Kobo, Google Play and iTunes. She can be contacted on Facebook or on her website www.mktod.com.
