The paper aims to explore the way the characterization of literary figures is systematically realized in text through the use of various lexico-grammatical resources within the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics developed by Halliday. For this purpose, the study analyzes the first chapter of Jane Austen``s Pride and Prejudice to shed light on the role of Mood, Modality, Polarity, Vocative and Appraisal in giving shape to the characterization of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet, the parents of the novel``s protagonist, Elizabeth. The analysis shows that all these linguistic resources play a distinct role in shaping the characters of the two figures. Some suggestions are made at the end to improve the model by integrating related conversational analysis and pragmatics theories.