Excerpt adapted from An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde Stage Set: The octagon room at Sir Robert Chiltern's house in Grosvenor Square, a large garden square in London. [The room is brilliantly lighted and full of guests, and at the top of the staircase stands Lady Chiltern, a woman of about twenty-seven years of age, who receives the guests as they come up. Over the well of the staircase hangs a great chandelier with wax lights, which illuminate a large eighteenth-century French tapestry—representing the Triumph of Love, from a design by Boucher—that is stretched on the staircase wall. On the right is the entrance to the music room. The sound of a string quartet is faintly heard. The entrance on the left leads to other reception rooms. Mrs. Marchmont and Lady Basildon are seated together on a King Louis the Sixteenth sofa.] MRS. MARCHMONT: Going on to the Hartlocks' tonight, Margaret? LADY BASILDON: I suppose so. Are you? MRS. MARCHMONT: Yes. Horribly banal parties they give, don't they? LADY BASILDON: Horribly banal! Never know why I go. Never know why I go anywhere. They're all so tedious. MRS. MARCHMONT: I come here to be educated. LADY BASILDON: Ah! I hate being educated! MRS. MARCHMONT: So do I. It puts one almost on a level with the commercial classes, doesn't it? But dear Gertrude Chiltern is always telling me that I should have some serious purpose in life. So I come here to try to find one. LADY BASILDON: [Looking round through her spectacles.] I don't see anybody here tonight whom one could possibly call a serious purpose. The man whom I sat next to at dinner talked to me about his wife the whole time. MRS. MARCHMONT: How very trivial of him! LADY BASILDON: Terribly trivial! What did the man next to you talk about? MRS. MARCHMONT: About myself. LADY BASILDON: [Languidly.] And were you interested? MRS. MARCHMONT: [Shaking her head.] Not in the smallest degree. LADY BASILDON: What martyrs we are, dear Margaret! MRS. MARCHMONT: [Rising.] And how well it becomes us, Olivia! 5 Select the correct answer. Based on the stage directions at the beginning of the passage, what inference can be made about the social standing of these characters?
A. They are part of the educated professional class.
B. They belong to the entrepreneurial, corporate elite.
C. They belong to the wealthy, established elite.
D. They are part of the governmental ruling class.