[LAB] The article examines representations of prostitutes in the early works of Tennessee Williams. The characters of hustlers in two of his two short stories, “In Memory of an Aristocrat” (1940) and “One Arm” (1942-45) as well as one short drama, “Hello from Bertha” (1941), are discussed as representatives of Williams’s employment of the hyperbolic figuration. In the case of each of the three examined characters, Choiński discusses the excessive and contrastive elements of descriptions which allow Williams to investigate the grotesqueness of human physicality on sale.