Gender Roles & Faramir's Ultimate Triumph
How Tolkien plays with gender with Faramir and Eowyn is just so bonkers because traditionally, a woman shows her virtue through resisting sin, resisting temptation, maintaining her purity, and inspiring others to goodness, while men show their virtue through deeds and accomplishments.
Of course, for Eowyn and Faramir, this is the other way around.
Eowyn's great deed, her great triumph, is a martial feat, her destruction of the Witch King.
For all that Faramir's a skilled soldier, his two great triumphs are not in battle, in fact the defence of Osgiliath fails, but in acts of virtue, in resisting the Ring, and in healing Eowyn and inspiring her to turn towards hope and peace.
Faramir's ability, and his willingness, to take on this traditionally "feminine" role is so crucial for both their happy endings.
For Eowyn, she has not only suffered due to being barred from fighting for her country, and having freedoms deemed "masculine", but also for having the "feminine" responsibilities fall entirely on her shoulders, being forced to act as a "dry nurse" with no respite, crushing down the extent of her unhappiness and anger with her situation and her country, out of "duty" (in Gandalf's words) to Eomer and her male relations.
Understanding that Faramir will meet her in the middle, take on those emotional and caretaking duties, seek out her thoughts and feelings, (and Eomer too, hopefully, considering the words Gandalf gave him in the Houses of Healing and his own response), is integral to understanding Eowyn's happy ending.
Not only does she now have freedom to do things, to go to Rohan to help rebuild, to return to Gondor to marry Faramir, to go to Ithilien to restore it and make things grow, to heal things and fix things, at her will, instead of staying behind trying to tend things and hold things together so others can fight to put things to right, but she is also freed from the crippling duties of being the only person in her family to take on the "woman's" duty of acting as caretaker and dry nurse.
Meanwhile, for Faramir, as I have noted above his defence of Osgiliath, which, had his narrative followed the "traditionally male" route, would have have been his moment of martial victory, proved futile. Not only that, the two people he loved best, his father and brother, were lost, and lost to despair.
Faramir was the one having the dreams that brought Boromir to Rivendell, Faramir was meant to go in his stead. But he didn't, and Boromir died. Then, when it seemed Faramir was dying also, the loss of his son and the end of his bloodline was the final straw that saw Denethor succumb to despair.
However, Faramir is able to triumph, to defeat despair, on falling in love with Eowyn, and through his kindness and virtue, having her fall in love with him, thus renewing her desire to live, saving her where he failed to save Denethor and Boromir.
