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This article studies the house as an important signifying component of Cervantes's El celoso extremeño. In order to understand the multiple and sometimes contradictory meanings that the house acquires, the study proposes a reading of these transformations as a manifestation of an unstable allegory. The instability of the sign is also combined with the term ¿topophilia,¿ which describes the affective relationships that exist between members of a culture and the spaces they occupy. Topophilia is also understood as a major component of narrative, thus exploring parallels between conceptions of space and deployment of images. The manipulations of space articulated by Carrizales are studied as individual interpretations that are read (and lived) ¿allegorically¿ by other characters who use that space according to their needs. By focusing on the historicity of the house, the article demonstrates how the uses of the house are closely related to the spheres of the individual in his privacy and the way they clash with communal, public demands. The consequences of Carrizales's individual manipulation of the functions of the house are read as part of his melancholia. In the end, the symptoms of melancholia are incremented and surface more strongly due to the unanticipated uses of space effected by the other inhabitants of the house.
