The present paper discusses the play, Getting Out (1978) by Marsha Norman, in the context of a Foucauldian perspective, by placing the play in the context of wider historical and ideological concerns of penitentiary confinement. The narrative revolves around Arlene, a working-class woman from Kentucky, who struggles with the hardship of incarceration in an attempt to rebuild her life. Arlene’s struggle is a typical example of the ‘bottom-up’ dynamics of power, a subversive act of resistance to the same regimes of power that emphasize gender roles. However, as maintained in this paper, the covert and insidious nature of carcerality is not confined to prison walls; Arlene has literally “gotten out: of one type of prison only to be reimprisoned to live in a world of social and economic exclusion. Themes of patriarchy, confinement, and female identity have long been discussed in feminist approaches to the play, as well as in the existing scholarship. Departing from the prevailing readings of the play that privilege ‘top-down’ structures of power and, at the same time, isolate gender from institutional power. The following paper expands scholarship by situating the critical analysis of gendered oppression within a wider context of the penal system and emphasizing that power is articulated from the margins upward. Keywords: Marsha Norman, Getting Out, Michel Foucault, Incarceration, Institutional power, Patriarchy.