Nature left imperfect in her fairest work!'" He feels absolutely assured of his ability to succeed in removing the crimson hand that marks her cheek, the birthmark that he feels is the only thing to mar her otherwise perfect beauty. Aylmer believes that, when he succeeds in perfecting what nature could not, he will have achieved the ultimate triumph. It is his pride which matters to him, not her feelings or her life. In rendering her face without flaw, he will gratify himself and his own arrogant pride.

As Goodman Brown heads out into the forest to meet with the Devil, he regrets causing his wife any concern. She does not want him to leave her, but he insists that he must go. He thinks to himself:

Well; she's a blessed angel on earth; and after this one night, I'll cling to her skirts and follow her to Heaven.

In other words, Brown plans to rely on Faith's good works and morality in order to get into heaven. He does not want to have to do the hard work himself, and so he will merely follow her example after this. He thinks that he will gain easy passage to heaven by following her.

Thus, neither Aylmer nor Goodman Brown seems to truly love or care about his wife as a person. Georgiana is to be an experiment to gratify her husband's pride, and Faith is to be a model to smooth her husband's passage to heaven. Neither woman is loved for who she is, but only really what she can do for her husband.

Further, it is notable that neither man is successful in his endeavor to use his wife in this way: Aylmer does rid Georgiana of her birthmark, but he kills her in the process—no human being can be perfect; to be human is to be flawed. Brown cannot follow Faith to heaven because he loses his own Christian faith when he goes to the woods. In the forest, he learned that we are all imperfect sinners and inherently flawed.

The main similarity between the two stories is the idealistic protagonists in each.  In The Birthmark, Aylmer arrogantly believes that he has the skill to perfect in his wife what nature had left imperfect.  His idealistic dreams lead to a tragic end, however, when the potion he gives his wife removes her one earthly imperfection, making it impossible for her to remain on earth any longer.

In Young Goodman Brown, the protagonist has an idealistic view of his religious faith and those who have instructed him in that faith.  He arrogantly meets with the devil in the woods at night, thinking that he is strong enough to toy with evil and walk away unharmed.  When he sees distinguished members of his church congregation heading toward the evil assembly, his faith is shattered.  Like Aylmer, his idealistic pride led to a tragic end.

The most significant difference between the two stories is one emphasizes science and the other religion (or faith).  The Birthmark deals with science as it was understood during Hawthorne's time period.  Young Goodman Brown is set during the Puritan time period and focuses on their strict religious faith.

Both of Hawthorne's works—the novel The Scarlet Letter and the short story "Young Goodman Brown—are set in the early American colonies in the seventeenth century, and both focus on characters in the strict Puritan society of that time and place. 

"Young Goodman Brown" is an allegory, which means that each element of the story represents something beyond the literal meaning. Young Goodman Brown represents the everyman, and his journey into the woods can be said to symbolize every person's maturation. He learns in the woods that even the seemingly purest members of his society are sinners. He even sees his own wife, Faith, who he idolizes as the most innocent and perfect person he knows, at the ceremony in the woods. Her pink ribbon could symbolize a mix of purity (white) and sin (red). Everyone in the town is at the ceremony, which means that everyone sins or has a dark side. Young Goodman Brown, however, cannot accept this truth about human nature, and his life is ruined by the knowledge. 

As a novel, The Scarlet Letter is more complex than the short story and lends itself to multiple themes. Nonetheless, sin is a common concern of both texts. In the novel, Hester has sinned by having an affair and bearing a child out of wedlock. She is publicly shamed and forced to wear an A on her chest so everyone knows she is an adulterer. The key difference here is that her sin is out in the open, while in Young Goodman Brown, sinners' wrongs are hidden in the daytime under a veneer of respectability. The secrecy of sin does emerge in The Scarlet Letter through the character of Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale. He is the man who had the affair with Hester and impregnated her. However, he faces no public shame and is able to maintain his position as a holy and admired figure in the town. This is because his sin remains hidden, as the sins of the townsfolk in "Young Goodman Brown." The difference is that his sin tortures him internally and eventually leads to his death, while the sinners in "Young Goodman Brown" seem to carry on with their everyday lives without the guilt that Dimmesdale feels. 

Ultimately, similar settings and themes are present in both of Hawthorne's works. He was interested in Puritan history and the Salem witch trials, as he had at least one relative involved in that tragic event. The Scarlet Letter takes the common theme of sin further and makes it more complex than does "Young Goodman Brown." 

Both The Scarlet Letter and "Young Goodman Brown" are stories about sinners. In The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne and the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale sinned by sleeping together when no one knew if Hester's husband was still alive. Hester committed adultery, and because she became pregnant and could not hide her sin, she was punished. Dimmesdale, however, attempted to hide his sinfulness and, consequently, his guilty conscience caused him such pain that he died while still a young man, seven years later. In "Young Goodman Brown," a young man goes into the woods for some dark purpose, intending to recommit himself to his faith the next day. Although he does eventually turn away from the Devil, the fact that he turned his back on God by going into the woods in the first place renders him unable to find his faith again, and he lives a miserable life once he returns home.  

Both stories explore the effects of sin on the sinner. Hester owns up to her sin, and she is able to bear it. Dimmesdale does not confess his sin for a very long time, and his guilt eats away at him. Goodman Brown does not even think what he is doing is sinful since he plans to return to faith in the morning, but because of his decision to walk away from faith (symbolically represented by his wife, Faith), he too has committed a sin and really fails to accept responsibility for it. Thus, we see that the person who takes responsibility is able to recover her life to some degree: people in the town even begin to say that Hester's scarlet letter means "Able" instead of "Adulterer". On the other hand, the people who do not take responsibility for their sins never recover, and those sins eat away at them until they die.