“Jamaica is beautiful. Jamaica is so beautiful” (Black). Throughout the semester, we read several novels depicting an irresistible beauty of the Caribbean: a beauty that evokes, attracts, threatens, and ruins. This beauty has attracted outsiders to capture, rule, fight and visit these islands for centuries. Although the Caribbean is a geographically beautiful place, authors have used this term differently in their literature. My argument in this article is twofold: I believe that Jean Rhys writes of this beauty attributed to the Caribbean as a rejection of European influence on the Caribbean and a declaration of Caribbean independence from colonialism, and that his characterization of Christophine is her definition of true Caribbean beauty and identity. I will attempt to explain why this is important to our understanding of these works, and of the Caribbean in general. In Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea, the reader is constantly reminded of the natural beauty of the Caribbean through the novel's multiple narrators; I would like to focus on the ideas of Antoinette's husbands (whom I will call Rochester for the purposes of this article) about the beauty of the island, and the immediate effect it will have on him upon his arrival. Rochester says he didn't have "much time to notice anything." I got married after arriving in Jamaica and for almost three weeks I was in bed with a fever” (Rhys, 67). While it is common for a tourist in an environment very different from normal to fall ill, Rochester suggests that this is not an accidental illness: “The road was going uphill. On one side the wall of greenery, on the other a steep slope leading to the ravine below. We stopped and looked at the hills, the mountains and the blue...... middle of paper...... water, she makes a statement that supersedes this fictional novel. Through Rochester's description of the beauty of the island and the person of Christophine, Rhys proclaims that the Caribbean does not need nor want help from Europe. Rhys says the beauty of the Caribbean is natural and organic and cannot be created by the colonial government. Throughout this semester, we have seen many writers struggle with the notion of true Caribbean identity, as if the past had somehow manipulated their identity and conformed it to the shape of the European and American ideal. Rhys, along with Christophine, disputes this by saying that the Caribbean is too beautiful: it can never be tamed, touched or understood. Works CitedBlack, Stephanie. Life and debt. June 2001. Rhys, Jean. Wide Sargasso Sea. New York, NY: WW Norton & Company Inc., 1992.Print.