Air carrier flight crew reported a pressurization problem inflight. Flight crew returned to departure airport and landed uneventfully.

Narrative

During the climb around 17500ft we noticed that the cabin altitude was 8800ft. I requested ATC to level off and after leveling off the cabin altitude kept rising. I told the FO (First Officer) that we were going to perform a [priority handling] descent and ATC gave us 11000ft due to traffic; we started our descent after reading the QRC.Our descent with a rate between 3500ft to 4000ft with an initial airspeed of 270 kt. I exercised the captain's authority to keep the landing gear up and not deploy the O2 masks because we were not very high due to the high workload in the cockpit. We still had to run the 02 mask donning procedure which would have delayed our descent.I notified the FA (Flight Attendant) stating that we are going to perform a [priority handling] descent; return to ZZZ and that it will be a normal landing as well the PAX (passengers). As we were descending; we informed dispatch via ACARS. During the descent through 14000ft the cabin altitude went off and as we passed though 12000ft the message extinguished. We leveled off at 11000ft as ATC was clearing the traffic around us and we were cleared to 10000ft; we told ATC that we need vector to setup the airplane as well burn fuel to avoid an overweight situation; I decided to [request priority handling]; ATC vectored us and then instructed to a hold at ZZZZZ at 4000ft. During the vector we ran the landing numbers; and we were about 700lbs overweight we dropped the landing gear during the vector and kept it down all the time. We entered the hold and after 7 minutes we were below max landing weight; we landed with no further issues.After getting to the gate; I wrote up; called Operations Control; gave my statement to the duty manager; retuned a call to the chief pilot.The MX (maintenance) logbook stated that the aircraft had a captain DV (Direct Vision) window seal replacement the prior day at ZZZ; which was confirmed by MX personnel; and we are not sure if that was the issue.I decided to use my captain's authority not to deploy the masks and leave the landing gear up because we were not very high and it would delay the descent. We were in constant communication with Dispatch; FA and PAX. My crew was great at CRM each one of them knowing their tasks.