Pivotal events (4)

And we might include the odd conversation with John Thorpe at the end of Book one where he obviously means to begin making love to Catherine combined with the Isabella's obvious campaign against the Tilney's in the central chapter that begins book 2. This pathetic failure (in more than one sense of pathetic) of a love affair contributes to Thorpe's anger and his subsequent denunciation of Catherine's family to General Tilney.

The only thing all these central events have in common is Catherine's inability to decipher other people's motives and we might clean things up a bit that way. But is that what the book is about?

Maybe.