"'God gave her into my keeping.' repeated Hester Prynne, raising her voice almost to a shriek. 'I will not give her up!' And here, by a sudden impulse, she turned to the young clergyman, Mr. Dimmesdale, at whom, up to this moment, she had seemed hardly so much as once to direct her eyes. 'Speak thou for me!' cried she. 'Thou wast my pastor, and hadst charge of my soul, and knowest me better than these men can. I will not lose the child! Speak for me! Thou knowest, for thou hast sympathies which these men lack! thou knowest what is in my heart, and what are a mother's rights, and how much stronger they are, when that mother has but her child and the scarlet letter! Look thou to it! I will not lose the child! Look to it!'"
In this quote from The Scarlet Letter the readers can finally get an idea of who the father of Pearl is. Hester expresses herself to Mr. Dimmesdale in a way that she has never expressed to anyone else. She has never asked for anyone's help until this point and now she is asking him, showing some comfort she feels with him. From all these men she claims he is the only one who understands her and has a heart. Instead of turning to anyone else, at a situation where it had to do with her daughter, she turned to him. She knew he would have helped her for the sake of their daughter. She knew he would not want to watch her suffer and since he has not done much to help them, this might have been a good way for him to help them for once, by letting them stay with each other. To me, this quote is the climax of the story because it is where the readers see a change of tone in Hester, a sort of feelings towards this man, and a choice of words that can lead to conclusions of Mr. Dimmesdale being the father.
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